Teenage Drivers Are Dangerous For Others

By Margarita Nahapetyan

According to American Automotive Association (AAA), teenage drives pose a great risk not only to other people on the road, but mostly to passengers sitting next to them.

Most of the people that are being killed in teen driver accidents are people other than teenagers themselves, state the results of a 10-year analysis of crash data by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety. The analysis revealed that nearly one third of people who were killed in car crashes were drivers between the ages of 15 and 17, and nearly two-thirds of the victims in a deadly accidents were passengers, people sitting in the other vehicles, motorcyclists and pedestrians.

"For every teen driver killed in a crash, almost two other people are also killed," said AAA President and CEO Robert L. Darbelnet, and added that there is undoubted relationship between teen driver safety and the safety of other people out in the streets.

To be more specific, nationally, between 1998 and 2007, crashes in the United States that involved 15-, 16- and 17-year-old drivers killed nearly 30,000 people. Of all those people 10,388 (37 per cent) were teenagers themselves. The other 17,750 (63 per cent) death victims included passengers sitting in the same car. Almost 7,000 victims were occupying other vehicles with adult drivers, and a little more than 2,000 included non-motorists and others.

A previous research that was conducted in 2006 found that between 1995 and 2004, auto crashes that involved 15-, 16- and 17-year-old drivers took the lives of 31,000 people, of whom more than 36 per cent were teen drivers themselves and 63.6 per cent were others. It is very risky and even deadly challenging to let young people drive, said AAA Foundation President and CEO Peter Kissinger. Families and teenagers must be aware how serious is the responsibility of seating behind the wheel, as well as understand that fatal consequences could be involved, he concluded.

According to medical authorities, the first year of teen driving poses the highest risk of injury for any driver of any age, including senior citizens as well. Boys, in general, are more likely to be involved in car crashes than girls. There is nothing new or surprising about that, as boys enjoy to a high extent risky and fast driving that can lead to a car accident.

However, some of the analysis results were quite surprising, AAA said. Their analysis of National Highway Traffic Safety Administration data showed a drop in both teen driver fatal accidents and a larger drop in deadly outcomes of others during the past ten years. For instance, the rate of U.S. fatal accidents that involved young drivers fell from 23.7 per cent to 15.4 per cent, which is a 35 per cent decrease. At the same time, deadly crashes for the drivers between 35 and 54 years dropped by 18 per cent to a rate of 15.6 per cent, precisely the same rate as for young drivers.

By releasing the results of the analysis, AAA is trying to send a message to all the U.S. states. This would be limiting the number of passengers a new driver can have in the vehicle by 1 person under the age of 20 for the first 6 months, and limiting the hours a new driver can be on the road. In addition, AAA strongly recommends that teenagers take at lest 50 hours of certified driving lessons for a minimum of 6 months before they could be qualified for a driver's license.