'How's My Driving?' Bumper Stickers for Teens Hit the Market

Ever wish you could know how your teen is driving when you're not watching? Well, a Manassas-area resident and father of two has come up with a way to keep parents in the know.

Robert "Bob" Fabian and his adult sons, Andrew and Jeffery, are the minds behind teendrivingsticker.com, a service that provides a bumper sticker with a short code that other drivers can use to report a teen's good or bad driving.

They aren't selling the sticker but rather the service, which provides two years of monitoring for just $20, the Bob Fabian said.

If another driver takes note of something, they enter the code on the website and leave a note, which is then sent via email to the parent of the child with that code.

"It's the community being an extension of the parents," Fabian said. "The community is looking out for each other."

It's not a tattle-tale service but a proactive way to get teens to drive safely, he said.

"We want them to know that we're watching them. It's one more precaution. It doesn't have to bad, it can be good. It's nice to hear good things," Fabian said.

"It's good to be more proactive ... but what you don't want to hear is, 'Your kid's been in an accident.' Being proactive doesn't guarantee anything,  but I think you can minimize some of the bad."

When witnesses to teen driving come to the website, there is a message asking them to not be overly emotional in their note and to not use profanity, he said.

If there is a bad report on the teen driver, the website offers  parents council on how to talk to the teen in a respectful manner about the situation and make the conversation positive. 

Even children that are otherwise well-behaved can make mistakes in the car, Fabian said.

"You can be the parent of a good teen, but when they get in the car, well, let me say this—when I got in the car—there's the 'good' you and there's the you that wants to experience the dark side of things," Fabian said.

The teen driving bumper stickers would be a good fundraiser items for schools, he said.

It's easier than selling candy bars or pizza and the monetary profit would be great for the fundraising group, said Fabian, who works in technology at Osbourn High School in Manassas.

A bumper sticker fundraiser can be used year after year because there are always new teen drivers taking to the roadway, he added.

Fabian and his sons came up with the idea for the bumper stickers, just six months ago.

The longest part of the process was the research phase; they were surprised to learn there is no other business like theirs out there, Fabian said. 

Twenty-eight year old Jeffery Fabian came up with the idea through his work as an attorney after seeing the "How's My Driving?" bumper stickers on the large fleets of vehicles used by other companies, his father said. 

Thirty-year-old Andrew Fabian is a computer savvy programmer who developed the web-based aspect of the business, Fabian said.

Both Fabian sons were raised in Fredericksburg and are graduates of Stafford High School.

Get more information about the teen driving bumper stickers by emailing info@teendrivingsticker.com or calling 571-261-TEEN.