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The worry lines beside his eyes gave him away.

Right after I asked my friend Jeff how he was doing, and he said he was fine, I glimpsed the lines. “No, you aren’t,” I said. “Tell all.”

Then came the truth. He’s been teaching his 16-year-old daughter how to drive.

It has not gone well.

The toll so far: One fender dented in a shopping center parking lot, one near-murder of the transmission when she shifted into reverse while still moving forward — and many scream sessions.

“When my dad taught me how to drive, it wasn’t this hard,” he said.

Whether that was ever true, Jeff has decided to dip into his past. He has asked his father to take over driving lessons for Miss 16-Years-Old.

Grandpa has leapt into the job with enthusiasm, Jeff told me. He has been patient and soothing. He has never shouted, “We’re all going to die!” as his granddaughter fails to brake when she should.

“It has been a godsend,” Jeff said.

Could this be a signpost for other families? When a parent tries to teach a child to drive, much more is on the table than using your directional signals. It can be an emotional minefield.

Getting a driver’s license is all about freedom and power. When I got mine at 16, I can still remember the thrill of backing the family Ford out of the driveway, waving ta-ta to my mother and heading off toward glory.

No longer would my parents supervise my every move, or expect to. I couldn’t drink or vote yet, but hey, I could tool around the neighborhood with my friends aboard, as we blasted top-40 music. Great stuff!

Of course, I still had no solid idea of how to drive, because no 16-year-old has experienced all the hazards of the modern road.

I had never merged onto a jam-packed freeway at 60 miles an hour. I had never driven in snow. I had never had to decide in a split second what to do as I was about to miss a turn. Cut across three lanes of traffic and try to survive? Hope? Pray?

Unlike Jeff’s family, I had no grandfatherly options. My mother-instructor was camped in the shotgun seat, her hands clasped with tension.

Her lack of faith in me was clear. As she spilled instructions — too many instructions — she was actually making the lessons less safe. Her torrent of anxiety (“Slow down!” “Watch out!”) kept me from focusing as well as I should have.

Apparently, I survived (she did, too). But what a gift it would have been to have had a grandfather to my right.

For my grandfathers, a car was a tool, not a passport to chasing girls and challenging strangers to a drag race at a red light.

My grandpas always looked both ways before crossing a railroad track. They always made sure that they had enough gas. They never, ever violated the speed limit. They drove the right way and would have made sure that I did, too.

Nor would they have brought to driving lessons all the baggage that a birth parent brings.

Trust between father and teenaged child is a fragile balance. It can fray over the smallest things, especially as the child becomes taller than the papa. If the kid doesn’t pick up her dirty clothes from the floor, the pop quietly wonders if that kid is truly ready to pilot a two-ton car, no matter what a birth certificate might say.

Grandpas don’t fall as deeply into those pits of doubt. They’ve been around the block, both figuratively and in cars. They know, better than anyone, that a 16-year-old’s sharp reflexes are exactly what she’ll need to prosper as a driver.

They know, most of all, that a steady teaching hand is the key to a good outcome. No threats or ultimatums. Just tell the grandchild, calmly, to adjust the seat and the mirrors, take a deep breath and start the engine.

Jeff admits he feels like a failure. “My daughter should have been able to learn how to drive from me,” he said. “But I just couldn’t calm down enough.”

Luckily, he found a better path. His dad was not only equal to the task, but eager to perform it.

Bottom line: “She got her license last week,” Jeff said. Hooray for all three generations.

Bob Levey is a national award-winning columnist.