Teens Report on Teen Driving

Motor vehicle crashes are the number-one cause of death among teens in the United States, and the fatality rate for drivers ages 16 to 19 years is four times that of drivers ages 25 to 69 years. What is causing these grim statistics? To try to understand the problem, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and State Farm Insurance Company went to the people best able to describe teen driving—the young people themselves.

 In early 2006, the alliance conducted the first-ever National Young Driver Survey, aimed at learning about students’ perceptions and experiences surrounding teen driving. The survey was administered to 9th, 10th, and 11th graders in 68 randomly selected schools across the country that agreed to participate, resulting in a total sample of 5,665 students representative of all 10.6 million public high school students in the U.S. The sample included teens who are driving independently, are just learning to drive, or have never driven.

In a report released in January, the alliance described some of the findings.

•  Almost 40 percent of teen drivers said they are not responsible for car insurance, parking violations, gas, maintenance, or damage repairs of the vehicles they drive. Mostly, they say, parents pick up the tab for those expenses. Thirty-nine percent of young drivers say they are the primary drivers of the vehicles they use.

• Teens agree that having passengers in a car creates many distractions, but 93 percent of those surveyed reported having seen other teens in a car with a young driver. Nearly half of teens report that passengers sometimes urge drivers to speed.

• Nine out of ten teens in the survey reported it is common to see teens driving while talking on cell phones, and seven out of ten said they sometimes see a teen driving and talking on a cell phone while emotionally upset. More than 80 percent of those who drive say they own a cell phone, and almost half of the teen drivers admitted they sometimes talk on the phones while driving. Said one teen: "You can be getting mad on the phone and you just forget about everything."

• As the result of campaigns against drunk driving by advocacy groups, teens seem aware of the hazards involved in driving after drinking, and few claim to drive while under the influence of alcohol or other drugs. Statistics show than teens are actually less likely than adults to get behind the wheel after drinking, but when they do, their risk of crashing is far greater, even with low or moderate blood-alcohol levels.

•  Taking the wheel without enough sleep is seen as less of a risk than driving after drinking, though teens are often sleep-deprived as a result of academic pressures, multiple extra-curricular activities, and early school start times. The majority of drowsy driving-related crashes are caused by drivers younger than 25 years.

• Half of the survey respondents reported they’ve seen behavior that could be described as "road rage" in teen drivers, and 75 percent said they’ve observed teens driving while in heightened emotional states--upset, stressed, angry, sad, or very happy or excited.

• Speed, or going too fast for road conditions, is implicated in a greater proportion of fatal teen crashes compared to crashes involving drivers of other age groups. When asked in the survey how often they saw teen drivers engaging in speeding behaviors, or how often they themselves speed, students said speeding is much more common than substance use, with more than 90 percent of respondents reporting having seen or been involved in speeding. Often, they said, the speeding involved racing with others.

• Teens have the lowest seat belt use of any age group; six out of 10 drivers ages 16 to 20 who were killed in crashes were unrestrained. In the survey, however, 79 percent of teens reported "often or always" wearing seat belts while driving and 70 percent said they wear them when they are passengers in cars with drivers of any age.

The survey report notes that "To teens, driving is considered an essential coming-of-age experience, and it has become an established aspect of teens’ maturation and socialization processes." Nearly three-fourths of 9th through 11th graders are learning to drive or are already driving. To reduce the hazards to those drivers as they take to the road, "More work needs to be done in this area of research and outreach to reduce teen crashes and their resulting deaths and disabilities," the authors say.

The sponsors say their report, "Driving Through the Eyes of Teens," is intended for use by the media, educators, advocates, researchers, parents "and anyone in a position to help keep our teens safe on the road." Information on study design or data interpretation is available from the Center for Injury Research and Prevention at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia , www.chop.edu/injury.

See also: "Study Confirms Teens Drive More Riskily with Passengers," http://www.healthinschools.org/2005/aug25_alert.asp.