Why 16-year-olds die in crashes

By: Drivers.com staff

Date: Tuesday, 10. February 2009

The U.S.-based Insurance Institute for Highway Safety has identified a number of reasons for the high crash rate among 16-year-old drivers.

"This is the first time we've been able to identify reasons that 16-year-olds are more at risk than older teens," says Institute senior vice-president Allan F. Williams, one of the world's leading experts on problems associated with young drivers. Sixteen-year-olds had previously been studied as part of the larger group of teenage drivers so that their differences hadn't been isolated.

What's different about 16-year-olds' fatal crashes? They're more likely to involve driver error, speeding, and other thrill-seeking behavior. They're more likely to include three or more occupants-often teenage peers-in the vehicle.

During 1994, the institute's researchers interviewed dozens of parents and siblings of 16-year-olds who died in crashes, publishing their accounts of the crash and its aftermath. These personal accounts helped spark national interest in the issue.

Also in 1994, the institute made the case for graduated licensing, which was first implemented in New Zealand in 1987. Similar systems were adopted in 1994 in the Canadian provinces of Ontario and Nova Scotia. Graduated licensing is also beginning to attract attention in the United States. Apart from making the case for graduated licensing, the institute explains why traditional approaches to improving the safety of young drivers don't work as well as many people expect.

Training and education programs can help teens learn driving skills, but it's often not poor skills that cause the crashes. It's the attitudes of teenagers, who naturally tend to rebel against adult standards. Peer pressure influences them more than advice from adults. Teen are slower than adults to perceive danger and, when they do, they often don't relate to it. They think they are invulnerable.

The risk is highest when 16-year-olds are out at night with their peers, the institute says. Crashes involving this group occur more often on Friday and Saturday evenings compared with fatal crashes involving older drivers.

Eighty-two per cent of such crashes involved driver error when 16-year-old were at the wheel, compared with 62 per cent of fatal crashes involving adult drivers. The proportion of fatal crashes with three or more occupants in the vehicles is twice as high when 16-year-olds are driving.