There has been a troubling increase in car accident fatalities involving teenage drivers. The Governors’ Highway Safety Association (GHSA) reported on the increase in teen crash deaths, as well as on a new report that is focused on the risks for older teen drivers.
As car accident rates with teens climb, understanding the dangers becomes increasingly important. It is also essential to understand your rights if you are hurt or if someone you love is killed in a collision with a teen driver. New York injury attorneys can provide insight into what your options are for pursuing a claim for compensation if a young motorist was at fault for causing an accident.
A Close Look at Teen-Involved Auto Accidents
According to the GHSA, there has been a 10 percent spike in teen-involved car accident deaths in 2015, as compared with the prior year. This news is especially troubling because teens are already the most at-risk drivers on the road. Teen drivers are 1.6 times as likely as adult drivers to become involved in a fatal crash and car accidents are among the leading cause of death for teens.
As the death toll rises, research is being done into which teens are most at risk. Surprisingly, the GHSA has indicated that it is not younger novice teen drivers who are most at risk — instead, it’s older teens. Data from 2005 to 2014 on teen crashes was reviewed by researchers in order to better understand risks facing teen drivers. The research revealed that there have been much more substantial improvements in fatal crash ratings among 15 to 17 year olds than in fatal crash ratings among 18 to 20 year olds.
Driving programs focused on driving skills like vehicle handling, hazard recognition, speed management and space management have targeted younger drivers and have been effective at helping to improve safety, but older teens are not benefitting from this education as much as younger teens are. Graduated licensing programs that impose restrictions on new teen drivers have also helped to reduce car accident rates among those in the 15 to 17 age group. However, once teens turn 18, graduated licensing programs no longer apply and these older teens now have the same unrestricted rights to drive as adults do, even though they may not have the maturity level of older adults.
The GHSA believes that graduated licensing programs should be expanded until aged 21 and that safe driving programs need to be made more accessible to older teens, such as by offering courses in college programs. Hopefully, this could help to prevent even older teens from causing accidents to occur which injure themselves or others on the road.
When teens of any age become involved in collisions, victims need to understand their rights. Teen drivers must have auto insurance just as adult drivers do, and this insurance can pay damage claims when a teen driver of any age causes an injury or fatality to passengers or other motorists. To find out more about what happens after a collision involving a teen driver, contact Rosenberg, Minc, Falkoff & Wolff for help.
