October Is A Dangerous Month For Teen Drivers

According to many sources, October is the month that is most fraught with accidents and injuries for teen drivers. With that in mind, I thought it might be appropriate to share some statistics about teen drivers with you. As you will see, a 16 year old driver is certainly much more dangerous than a 17 year old. Therefore, parents must be really vigilant to help their teens through their first year of driving.

Let’s start with traffic tickets. This is the one area where the 16 year old drivers have a slight advantage. This is because it takes time for some young drivers to develop the confidence to begin speeding. In addition, many teens wait to obtain their license so that there are not as many 16 year drivers on the road as there are 17 and 18 year old drivers.

Here are the numbers on traffic citations. This lists the number of citations per 100 drivers for each age:

16 year old drivers 31 per 100
17 year old drivers 36.6 per 100
18 year old drivers 38.9 per 100
All ages 17.3 per 100

Now let’s take a look at the crash rates for teen drivers. This is the number teens involved in an accident per 1000 drivers.

16 year old drivers 61.4 per 1000
17 year old drivers 46.2 per 1000
18 year old driver 45.4 per 1000
All ages 16.8 per 1000

Said another way, the crash rates for 16 year olds is 3.7 times that of 20 years olds and the crash rates of drivers between ages 16 and 19 is 2.7 times higher than that of all other drivers.

Last of all, I want to take a quick look at what causes the accidents with teen drivers.
As you can see, the primary cause of accidents by teen drivers is unsafe speeds.
Unsafe Speed or Speeding 35.3%
Right of Way 20.4%
Improper Turn 14.8%
Sign or Signal 8.1%
Alcohol or Drugs 5.1%
Passing or Lane Change 4.3%
Wrong Side of the Road 3.1%
Other 8.7%

There are many tools you can use to help keep your child safe while he or she gains the valuable experience needed to be a safe driver. Visit www.TeenDriverInsurance.com/clinard for more information or simply read some of my previous blog postings as I have covered a lot of these techniques in this blog already.