Would You Tattle On Someone Else's Kid?

North Texas mom thinks 'tattling' might create safer teen drivers

Driving down a busy North Texas road, Sharon Trahey saw something nearly everyone has witnessed: a reckless teenage driver.
 
"He was going very fast. He was weaving in and out of traffic. He went up on the shoulder," said Trahey.

As a mother of five, she had only one thought.

"I worried about him like I would my own children, and wished that there was some way that I could tell his parents how he was driving, because there was no one in the car with him," said Trahey.

Moments later, she saw a familiar bumper sticker on the back of a commercial vehicle. On it was a phone number to report bad driving.

"It just clicked that I needed to do something, with a sticker like that, to help monitor teenage drivers and help parents have a way of knowing what their kids were doing when they're not with them," said Trahey.

She started a company called Tattle On My Kid. Customers get a bumper sticker with a phone number on it asking strangers to call and comment on how the teenager is driving. Those comments are then forwarded on to the parents.

Her 17-year-old son was the first to rack up some complaints.
 
"My son has had four calls; two positive, two pretty negative," said Trahey. "It gave my husband and I the opportunity to discuss it with him, and he has since realized that people are going to call."

Trahey says her son promised to make better decisions behind the wheel, and the calls about him have stopped. But she says others calls come in almost daily.

"Too many kids die for senseless reasons, and I wanted to see if I could do my part to help save a life," said Trahey.

The service costs $55 and includes the bumper sticker and one year of monitoring. For more information, head to the service's website at TattleOnMyKid.com

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