You may have heard that teen drivers are the most high-risk age group. It’s true. When you look at who gets involved in fatal car accidents, for instance, adolescents’ crash rates are three times higher than older drivers.
Now, you may not be a teen or have a teen driver in your family, but this risk can still affect you. When these drivers cause two-car accidents, many of those who are injured are in other vehicles. Pedestrians and cyclists are also at risk. These high crash rates are a problem for everyone.
Why teen crash rates are so hard to fix
The catch-22 that makes teen accident rates such a hard problem to fix is simple: These drivers often cause accidents because they are inexperienced. Someone who just got their license in the last few months or even the last few years just does not have that many hours on the road. Inexperience leads to mistakes, and mistakes lead to devastating accidents.
However, the only cure for inexperience is putting in more hours. The more time a teen spends behind the wheel, the better they become at driving. It’s this, as much as age itself, that means older drivers are less dangerous. They’ve already learned from the mistakes they made when they were young.
Unfortunately, many of these teens are going to cause serious accidents as they work on getting the very experience they need to lower their crash rates. There is no real way around this. Even raising the driving age just delays when those inexperienced drivers get on the road.
Have you been injured?
If you have been injured or lost a loved one in an accident, you must know how to seek compensation for medical bills, funeral costs and more.
