Keeping Your Teen Safe Behind
the Wheel
 Do
you know that vehicle crashes are the number one cause of death for
teens (ages 15 through 19)? The risk of a teen being in a crash is
highest during the first 24 months of driving experience. Did you also
know that one out of every five 16-year-olds will be in a car crash?
Parents and other adults should know that teens who drive after dark and
have other people in the car or use their cell phone while driving are
at a much higher risk of being in a car crash.
Here are some tips to help those new, young drivers stay safe on the
road:
• Only allow your teen to drive the safest of vehicles. Larger cars and
minivans are generally safer than small, sporty cars or midsize SUVs.
• Supervise daily practice sessions with your teen so that he or she
knows how to handle potential road problems to the best of his or her
ability.
• Restrict night driving until your teen has more experience. Also
limit the number of passengers your teen may have in the car.
• Make sure that your teen knows that he or she and all passengers in
the car must wear seat belts. Two-thirds of teens killed in crashes were
not wearing seat belts.
• Enforce zero tolerance of drug or alcohol use while driving.
• Tell your teen that speeding will not be tolerated. One-third of all
teen crash fatalities involve speeding.
• Reinforce the message that your teen is not to use his or her cell
phone while driving.
• Remind your teen to stay alert while driving, teens require more
sleep than adults and can become overtired more easily.
• Remind your teen that being in a hurry really doesn’t get you to your
destination much faster. Emphasize that it’s more important to stay
safe.
• Remind your teen to keep his or her cool while driving. Teens often
experience intense emotions and you don’t want your teen to make bad
driving decisions while upset or angry.
• Establish a driving agreement with your teen, and if he or she
violates it, consistently take away privileges as agreed.
— Adapted from the National Safety Council website
Old
Computers Provide History, Money
 If
you’re cleaning out your basement, you might want to think twice before
you throw out that old desktop or laptop. It seems that those early
model computers are coming into vogue as historical artifacts and are
being sought for nostalgic reasons or for their kitsch value and
occasionally for monetary value.
The conventional
wisdom of the past decade has been that old computers were worthless,
but that’s changing rapidly. For instance if you own a 1975 Altair 8800
(which incidentally was named after a planet in a Star Trek episode) it
can bring in between $930 and $2,785, according to Pepe Tozzo, author of
Retro Electro: Collecting Technology
from Atari to Walkman. You can see which direction some of
the vintage technology is headed when you consider that the eight-page,
typed manuscript titled “Outlines for Plans for Development of
Electronic Computers” (written in 1946 and referred to as the founding
document on today’s computer industry) sold at Christie’s for $72,000 in
February.
—
Adapted from the
Chicago Tribune
Identity Theft Still Rampant
Fifty million
Americans have been exposed to the possibility of identity theft because
of recent security breaches. Here are some stats on the spate of
identity theft crimes occurring in 2004:
• 28 percent were credit card fraud.
• 19 percent were phone or utilities fraud.
• 18 percent were bank fraud.
• 13 percent were employment-related fraud.
• 8 percent were government benefits fraud.
• 6 percent were attempted ID theft.
• 5 percent were loan fraud.
• 22 percent were “other” types of identity theft. “Other” includes
stolen IDs when caught committing a crime, insurance and securities
fraud, healthcare fraud and bankruptcy scams.
Other identity theft information:
• Either fraudulently opening credit card accounts or using existing
accounts has gone down since 2002.
• 16 percent of all ID frauds involve phone accounts.
• Illegal fund transfers doubled since 2002.
• Using someone else’s identity to get hired for a job is up 4 percent
since 2002.
— Adapted from
Newsweek | 
