In conjunction with efforts to strengthen graduated driver licensing efforts across the country and educate teenagers on driver safety, AAA is urging parents of teenage drivers and would-be drivers to improve their teens' safety.

Automobile crashes are the leading cause of death for teens.

"Parents can have a tremendous impact on their teens' safety," said Susan Pikrallidas, AAA vice president of public affairs.

AAA created a list of 10 things parents can do to help keep their teen drivers safe all year long.

1. Know and understand your teens. Not all teens are ready to drive at the same age. Teenagers mature, develop emotionally, and become responsible at varying rates, which parents need to gauge as they permit their teens to drive.

2. Be a positive and responsible role model. Teenagers learn from their parents' behavior. Parents' actions behind the wheel influence the driving behavior of their teens. Research from the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety found that teens involved in crashes had parents who more often had poor driving records than the parents of collision-free teens.

3. Practice might not make perfect, but it can make for better teen drivers. As an important supplement to formal driver education, supervised driving sessions with parents provide teens with opportunities to enhance learning, reinforce proper driving techniques and skills, and receive constructive feedback from the people that care most about their safety and success.

4. Keep teen drivers free of teen passengers and off the road at night. Extensive research indicates that a teen driver's chances of crashing increase with each additional teen passenger. Research shows teen crash rates spike at night and that most nighttime crashes occur between 9 p.m. and midnight.

5. Encourage teens to get enough sleep. Teens need about nine hours of sleep every night, but many teens fall short because of the combination of early-morning school start times and homework, sports, after-school jobs, and other activities. A lack of sleep can negatively affect vision, hand-eye coordination, reaction time and judgment.

6. Eliminate the distractions. Cell phones and text messaging are hazardous distractions for teen drivers. With surveys reporting widespread use of distracting technology by teen drivers, one-third of states have recently banned cell-phone use by new teen drivers. Parents should make it a strict rule in their households, too.

7. Discuss, establish and enforce consequences. Parents should look to state graduated driver licensing programs as the minimum they should be enforcing. Parents should establish rules and consequences that they and their teens agree upon that extend beyond state laws. If the teen breaks a family driving rule, consequences should be enforced and the situation should be used as an opportunity for learning and discussion. Conversely, proper driving behavior should be encouraged and rewarded with additional liberties.

8. Create a parent-teen driving contract. Having rules, conditions, restrictions, and consequences of teens' driving written down in explicit and specific details establishes driving as a privilege, and not something to be taken lightly or for granted. AAA offers parent-teen driving agreements at www.aaa.com/publicaffairs.

9. Set a time each week for discussion and review. Parental involvement and communication is critical in the prevention of teen-related crashes, injuries and fatalities. Designate a time each week to address concerns (both parent and teen), review the teen's driving performance, and chart the progression towards established goals and benchmarks.

10. Make smart vehicle choice decisions for teens. As the family member most likely to crash, a teen should drive the safest vehicle the family owns. Things to consider are vehicle type (sedans are generally safer than sports cars, SUVs and pickup trucks) size (larger vehicles fare better in crashes than smaller vehicles), and safety technology (front and side air bags, anti-lock brakes, and stability control systems).

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Safety rules for teen drivers