The work between policy and practice
Road safety progress depends on more than commitments. It requires sustained action, strong partnerships, and accountability to ensure that policies…
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Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) has produced a valuable commentary on Teen Drivers.
It highlights:
- Teen drivers have crash rates nearly 4 times those of drivers 20 and older per mile driven. Immaturity leads to speeding and other risky habits, and inexperience means teen drivers often don’t recognize or know how to respond to hazards.
- Graduated licensing reduces teens’ driving risk. Graduated licensing allows teens to practice driving with supervision before getting their license and restricts driving after they are licensed. Today all states have at least some elements of graduated licensing. The current best practices are a minimum intermediate license age of 17, a minimum permit age of 16, at least 70 required hours of supervised practice driving, and, during the intermediate stage, a night driving restriction starting at 8 p.m. and a ban on all teen passengers.
- Alcohol is a factor in many teen crashes. Although young drivers are less likely than adults to drink and drive, their crash risk is higher when they do. The combination of drinking and driving is made worse by teenagers’ relative inexperience both with drinking and with driving.
The full article is available here.
The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) is an independent, nonprofit scientific and educational organization dedicated to reducing deaths, injuries and property damage from motor vehicle crashes through research and evaluation and through education of consumers, policymakers and safety professionals.
