About Us

In 1994, at the age of 15, Ryan Buckholtz started the New Teen Drivers' Homepage as a online community service.  "We had had several very serious accidents at Glenelg, my high school.  Two girls were killed in one accident and there were many other serious accidents, guys totaling their cars, others winding up in intensive care.  Also, my parents wanted to encourage me to learn about safe driving.  We went to the web back in 1994 and to our surprise there wasn't anything out there for teens.  So we came up with the idea of doing a website that gave easy to understand tips on safe driving for teens.  My mom helped me do a webpage and I started researching tips," relates Ryan.

Over the last ten years, millions of teens, parents, police, and teachers from all over the world have visited the site and many have sent in tips.  We also get a lot of questions from teens and try to answer all of them.  Many schools and youth websites link to our site.  Teendriving.com is now the most popular teen driving site on the web.  Ryan's project was recognized as one the most outstanding youth community service projects in the country in 1997 with a Prudential Spirit of America Award.

We think driving tips are important.  Just like any skill, driving takes a lot of practice and experience to become good at it.  And learning from mistakes and tips from other new drivers helps the process.  A lot of the tips on the site are basics that can benefit all drivers-not only teens.  Teen and new drivers have significantly more accidents than other age groups.  Even though they make up 7% of the population, teens account for 14% of the accidents.  Teens are involved in over 2 million accidents-both fatal and non-fatal-a year. So we have the potential to save a lot of lives.  We've heard from a lot of visitors to the site that they've avoided accidents by remembering some of our tips when they were in difficult driving situations.

Thanks for your interest in teendriving.com.

Ryan and Eileen Buckholtz

Ryan Buckholtz is now 28 years old.  He graduated from the University of North Carolina with a business degree and is currently living in Santa Monica, California.  Ryan had been an entrepreneur for as long as he can remember -- starting with buying and selling sports cards at trade shows. At the age of 15, he founded TeenDriving.com, which is now the top-ranked teen driving site on the web.  While attending UNC - Chapel Hill, he started a business that built computers, bought and sold computer products on eBay, and daytraded stocks for a living. After college he spent 3 years in the real estate industry, worked for the DNC in the 2004 Presidential Campaign, and traveled around the world playing professionally on the poker circuit.  Ryan is always looking for exciting and new ventures and is now working with a new startup called Edufire.com that is chaning the way people interact with tutors online. 

Eileen Buckholtz is Ryan's Mom--as well as a web and knowledge management consultant and the author of over 60 books of fiction and nonfiction for adults, kids, and teenagers.  In 2000, she was recognized as one the country's outstanding women in science and technology by Women in Technology International (witi.org).  Eileen in a professor of e-Business at the University of Phoenix Online and writes a national column on the Internet for Better Health and Living Magazine.  She is President of Technology Concepts which designs websites and provides emarketing for small businesses, authors, and individuals..