If you look closely, you will notice that I am quaking in my boots. The reason is simple; I am getting ready for my third and last son to start his foray into the world of driving.

Not certain whether my nerves would survive a third go-around, I decided to create this 10-point checklist that will help me determine if I am really ready to hand the keys over to my youngest.

If you are, or you know the parent of a soon-to-be licensed teen driver, then I invite you to share in my pain.

You know your teen driver is ready to get their license when:

1. You stop at a yellow light and they no longer say, "Geez, you should have punched it - you could have made it!"

2. During practice drives they no longer drive within 1 1/4 inch of the cars on the right.

3. They stop saying, "Driving is sooo easy. I don't know why parents make such a big deal about it."

4. They no longer ponder aloud whether your vehicle can really hit the top speed displayed on the speedometer.

5. They can make a complete stop at all stop signs without rolling through and whining, "I DID stop!"

6. You no longer hear them contemplate whether they will be able to "drift" in your vehicle.

7. They offer to work (at an actual job, that requires an actual effort) to pay for their own insurance.

8. They stop asking you questions like "So, how many tickets can you get before they take away your license?" or "Does a citation have the same fine if you drive 90 mph as it would if you were driving 100 mph?"

9. You no longer grip the armrest until your fingernails split, and your right eye has stopped twitching uncontrollably when you are a passenger on their practice drives.

10. Finally, there is no question that your teen is ready to get their driver's license when they start pointing out - on an annoyingly frequent basis - all the things that YOU are doing wrong when you are behind the wheel.

It is my fervent belief that the only folks who benefit when another teen driver hits the road are those companies that sell hair re-growth and/or gray-covering products to their parents.

My third son wants to get his driver's license. It's time, once again, to stock up on the L'Oreal.

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Comment/question No. 2: Wasn't there a law or ordinance or something passed a while back that made it illegal to play your car radio so loud that it could be heard 150 feet from your vehicle? Loud radios are more distracting to the driving public than cell phones in that drivers of other cars are affected by the noise. A small aside to this issue is that small children who are virtually captive in vehicles are having their hearing impacted by such loud volume. It would seem to me that it verges on child abuse. - Sue Coes

Answer: Maria and Sue, you have every right to be aggravated. If music is amplified to the point where it can be heard outside of a vehicle from 50 or more feet away, the driver is in violation of Vehicle Code 27007 and can be cited.

Cool reader comment: Michelle, here is another creative plate: O2BNOGG, seen in Upland. It means "Oh to be in Maui." OGG is the airport at Kahalui, Maui. You see, even though there is no "G" in the Hawaiian alphabet, the OGG comes from "Captain Boggs," the first chief pilot for Hawaiian Airlines, way-back-when. We really enjoy your columns. - Doug Neely

Drive Time Reminder: Sgt. Cliff Mathews, Special Services Division commander of the Upland Police Department, wanted me to remind you how to respond to failed traffic signals. Having never been one to disregard authority, I am dutifully printing this reminder: Whether the failure is caused by heat-related rolling black-outs or simply a technical failure of the signal, you need to treat blacked-out intersections exactly as if there were stop signs present.

Question: When two cars are at an intersection with stop signs and are facing each other, with one having a turn signal to make a left turn, which one should yield? I've always believed the one making the left turn should yield, but people seem to think that it's whoever was there last.  J. Knapp, Rialto

Answer: The people are correct, J. In the scenario that you portrayed, the driver who arrives first has the right-of-way.

Cool reader comment: A number of years ago while I was cruising around the East Mojave Desert on a scientific field trip, I saw this 'grizzly' old guy in a beat-up pickup truck. The bumper sticker he had was the best I'd seen. It read as follows: "Wife and Dog Missing - Reward for Dog -"  Chuck, Claremont

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Way back before cell phones were mandatory accessories, my VW Bug decided to break down on the 405 Freeway at 1 a.m.

As the only one of my college crew that had a car, I had been officially appointed the designated driver for an evening of dancing in Westwood. The drive back to our college in Long Beach had been filled with the animated recounting of everyone's adventures that evening, until the cough and wheeze of my Bug sucked the life right out of the party.

As the only one of my college crew that had a car, I had been officially appointed the designated driver for an evening of dancing in Westwood. The drive back to our college in Long Beach had been filled with the animated recounting of everyone's adventures that evening, until the cough and wheeze of my Bug sucked the life right out of the party.

At that time of night, none of us was about to walk to a call box in our platform shoes and clingy disco dresses, so we sat huddled and frightened in the Bug for five hours watching the sun rise over L.A., until we were finally saved by a CHP officer who made the call to a tow company for us.

While there is never a good time for a vehicle break down, sometimes it seems like our vehicles intentionally pick the most inopportune times and stress-inducing ways to quit on us.

A few decades ago, when Mark Cardenas of Alta Loma was 18, his '65 Mustang managed to break down in the middle of the desert at 3 in the morning. If it hadn't been for some helpful bikers who happened to be passing, Cardenas would have spent the rest of that day commiserating with the scorpions.

For Hollis Moore of Bonsall, the simple chore of changing a flat tire became an all-day nightmare when he found that the lug nuts for his mags did not fit the spare.

After an entire afternoon of searching and finally locating the correct-size lug nuts, Moore went to go put the spare on only to discover that he now did not have the correct-size wrench for the lug nuts.

"I ended up wasting the better part of a Saturday over one lousy flat tire," Moore said.

A few years back, my mother and brother were driving from Lake Tahoe with two big dogs in the car when my brother noticed that the minivan's "check engine" light had come on.

My brother quickly pulled off the freeway at the first exit. When he opened the hood, flames shot out and he panicked. "Get out of the car! Get out of the car!" was all my mother heard as she watched my brother take off at a full sprint down the street with his arms waving wildly in the air.

When my mother opened the car door, her big Labrador leapt out of the car and started chasing my brother. Then she saw the flames and was about to jump out of the minivan, too, when she realized that her German shepherd was still in the vehicle. The dog refused to move.

So my petite mother, who was a septuagenarian at that time, picked up the huge dog and started jogging down the street, as well.

It turns out that my brother had been running to a gas station a few hundred feet away and he returned with a gas station attendant and a fire extinguisher. They managed to put out the fire before it did too much more damage to the minivan.

I'm afraid I couldn't say the same for my brother's damaged ego, as he used to cringe when my mother retold the story of his panicked mad dash from the minivan countless times over the ensuing years.

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Question: I use cruise control all the time as I believe that the regulated speed makes me a safer driver, but my uncle told me that I should not use cruise control when it is raining. Is this true? - Xavier Torres, Redlands

Answer: This would be a good time to heed the advice of your relatives, Xavier. When the road is icy or wet and your vehicle begins to hydroplane, the cruise control will make your vehicle continue to accelerate and you can be launched into the air like a rocket if you don't get to the brake quickly enough to deactivate it.

As automobile manufacturers become more aware of this problem, some newer vehicles are being designed so that you cannot activate cruise control when the windshield wipers are turned on.

Q: We live on a residential street which ends in a cul-de-sac. Our neighbors routinely double park. This means their vehicle is parked smack in the middle of the road. It sometimes stays there 24 hours or more.

Is this legal? Also, if someone hits their car, who is at fault? I would think it is the person who is illegally parked in the middle of the road.  - Cathy

A: Double parking is never legal, Cathy, so your neighbors could be cited. However, should there be a collision between another vehicle and the illegally parked car, the likely outcome is that the driver of the moving vehicle would be found "at fault."

Q: A couple of months ago I was driving north on Vineyard in Ontario. I was a couple of cars from the green light on Fourth Street, when I noticed that the green light started flashing. The other drivers did not know what to do. About 30 seconds later, we heard a fire truck come up behind us on Vineyard and then made a left turn on to Fourth Street going west.

I never heard about the flashing green. I made a call to the local police department and asked about what you should do. Go forward with caution or stop? I really did not get a clear answer. - John, Rancho Cucamonga

A: Ah, the old flashing green light debacle. It's been a while since I addressed this question, and from your story, it sounds like it is still shaking up folks, so I don't mind revisiting the topic.

Some cities, such as Ontario, use the flashing green light to "make you look." The light is triggered by the oncoming emergency vehicles. Public agencies have found that people, in their confusion, show a much higher level of alertness for the flashing green then they do for the more commonly used flashing yellow.

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While Mr. Deason undoubtedly had only the best intentions, driving while having a Kodak Moment can only be regarded as a contender for special recognition among those who drive dangerously distracted.

Here are my personal top five picks for the Distracted Drivers Hall of Shame:

5. From a survey conducted by the American Iron and Steel Institute on distracted driving: a U.S. doctor was seen examining X-rays while driving.

4. Our own behind-the-wheel shutterbug, Mr. Derek Deason, unless he had a passenger snap that pic, in which case he is completely absolved and needs to address any letters of outrage to: d_allen@dailybulletin.com.

The top three unbelievable acts while driving were submitted by readers of the Ezine AOL Money and Finance:

3. "Driving down the 495 Interstate in (Maryland), I once caught a gentleman playing his saxophone while cruising at 55 mph in his Suzuki Samurai - lucky it didn't flip!" - RajibAmin

2. "I was driving behind a woman who kept looking down in her lap and her arms were moving in a flapping motion. I couldn't imagine WHAT she could be doing! When she stopped at a light I had to honk to get her moving again.

Finally I got along side of her and looked in her car. She was KNITTING!" - ArtRen00

1. "A guy actually had an easel set up in the passenger seat with paints and several brushes and was painting a picture while we were going 70 mph down a major highway." - Safe69

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates that nearly 80 percent of collisions and 65 percent of near-crashes involved a driver who had their mind on something other than the road within three seconds of the event.

According to the NHTSA, "Reaching for a moving object increased the risk of a crash or near-crash by nine times; looking at an external object by 3.7 times; reading by three times; applying makeup by three times; dialing a hand-held device (typically a cell phone) by almost three times; and talking or listening on a hand-held device by 1.3 times."

The message is crystal clear: Pay attention while you are driving - or pay the price.

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It is one thing to be a beautiful, rich, emaciated celebrity when you are caught driving illegally. You get your name in the paper more, your picture taken more and you get to hire a buff driver with cool shades to cart you around for a few months.

For the rest of us, getting caught driving with a suspended license means a painfully lighter wallet and the potential of getting reacquainted with the intimate workings of mass transportation.

If you drive without a license, or your license has been suspended or revoked, the first thing you will do is say goodbye to your beloved means of transportation for 30 calendar days.

To get the vehicle back at the end of those 30 days, the registered owner has to pony up the costs of towing and storage. Depending on the fees charged by the storage facility, the cost can be more than $1,000.

Add to that the $298 minimum fine for the offense that you will pay to the courts - and the fact that your insurance company will undoubtedly remove you from their preferred client list - and you will find that getting caught driving without a license is likely to put quite a dent in your rainy day fund.

If you happen to have a previous conviction for driving without a license, the state has the option of keeping your vehicle permanently.

But what if your bad-seed cousin Bob absconds with your car in the middle of the night without your knowledge? If cousin Bob is driving with a suspended, revoked or nonexistent license - there is no use trying to plead your case to the authorities. All the same consequences apply to the registered owner: The car will be towed and impounded, and a fine will be assessed.

Now if you and the officer aren't quite seeing eye-to-eye on the circumstances of the case, you do have the right to request a formal hearing. But be forewarned - the law is clear and does not distinguish whether it was you behind the wheel or your spouse, your child, a friend or a relative.

In the eyes of the law, the registered owner has a duty to ensure that the person driving their vehicle possesses a valid license.

There is, however, a way around facing all the consequences alone if you are the registered owner. Simply file a stolen-vehicle report against the driver. Cousin Bob will be facing felony vehicular-theft charges and some serious jail time, but you might end up getting your car back a little sooner.

It might come as a bit of a newsflash to Hollywood's party girls, but driving with a suspended license is considered a serious offense. Unlike most speeding offenses or doing the "California Roll" through a stop sign, which are infractions, driving without a license is a misdemeanor.

To be helpful, I have compiled the following checklist for the blonde brigade for the next time they are getting ready to drive:

1) Check makeup.

2) Check hair extensions.

3) Check to make sure you have a valid driver's license before you turn the key.

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