The Dangers of Teen Drivers that Speed
We all know the importance of safe driving and obeying speed limits. However, teen drivers that speed do so with far less experience and awareness of things that matter most when trying to avoid a motor vehicle crash. When a teen speeds, they need a greater distance to stop in the event of an incident, and they need to react much faster to avoid a collision. Considering teen drivers have less experience and fewer driving skills, their risky behaviors and disregard for the rules of the road come with deadly consequences.
Novice teen drivers are 30% more likely to have an accident on a road when driving over the speed limit. Other stats suggest that 21% of serious accidents caused by teen drivers involved speeding and a lack of safe driving according to the road conditions. It’s also known that crash rates that result in injuries are exacerbated when a driver is speeding.
The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia carried out independent research; proving not all teen crashes occur because of intentional risk-taking. And while this offers some comfort, the lack of driver education and training, along with inexperience is a major factor that cannot be ignored.
To improve driver’s safety and lower teen crash risks, new drivers should be educated on speed management, specifically around factors like road conditions. Simply knowing how to keep a safe distance from other vehicles in various situations would go a long way with many novice teen drivers. Practically speaking, this means showing a novice driver how to manipulate the break and accelerator correctly. For any supervised driving, it’s important to emphasize the small differences in an increase in speed can have. For example, the difference between driving at 30 vs. 40mph. It might not seem like much to a teen driver, but when you consider this 10mph difference has on stopping distance, reaction times, and collision energy upon impact; it’s a sizeable difference.
Teen Speeding and Driver Safety Stats
– Novice drivers are three times more likely to have a car accident in the first three months of their insurance policy compared with the last three months of their policy. (source)
– In 2019, around 12% of fatal crashes involved teen drivers. (source)
– Motor vehicle crashes are still the leading cause of death for teens in the US. (source)
– In 2020, there were 5037 occurrences of a motor vehicle crash involving a teenage driver.
– Young adult drivers that self-report their cell-phone usage while driving are known to undertake other risky behaviors such as going through red lights, speeding, and passing cars when it’s considered unsafe to do.
– In 2018, speeding was a contributing factor in just over ¼ of all fatal crashes. Meaning that speeding-related crashes resulted in around 25 deaths per day.
– Compared with experienced drivers, teen drivers are more likely to speed, and less likely to know the appropriate headway distance needed to remain safe.
– With any speeding-related crash, for each additional person in the vehicle, the risk of an accident occurring increased exponentially.
– Between 2015-2019, over 15,510 teen drivers were involved in fatal motor accidents; a third of these were due to speeding.
– According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, teen drivers are the age group most likely to be involved in a motor accident. They found that young drivers are also less likely to use their seatbelts.
– Florida, California, and Texas have the highest number of driving-related fatalities involving teen drivers in 2019.
– Today’s teen drivers are safer drivers compared to the 1980s. In 1982, a total of 10-984 teen-driver crashes were recorded, which dropped to around 4391 in 2019.
What’s the average driver age of a person involved in an auto accident?
Teen drivers are still the most likely to have an accident, specifically those between the ages of 16-17. In the US, the average age a person can obtain their license is 16, which makes sense as those teen drivers most likely to get into trouble are those who are least experienced and still learning to drive. When teens are driving after just getting their license, they’re still learning about safe driving behaviors and general traffic safety practicalities. While knowing the highway safety rules that driver education programs may have taught them, getting hands-on, practical driving experience is invaluable.
After the age of 17, the risk of a fatal motor vehicle accident does start to subside. However, it’s only when a driver reaches the age of 30-59 that they enter one of the safest driving groups of all. The safest drivers on the road are through to be those who are between 60-69. However, from 70, motor insurance premiums start to rise, as the risk of an accident occurring starts to increase.
