Increased Teen Driver Restrictions May Not be Working

A lot of debate exists about whether teen driving restrictions are successful, and a new nationwide study says graduated driver licensing programs placed on younger teens are merely shifting the dangers to older teens, according to the Los Angeles Times. But then others still support a study published last year in the journal Traffic Injury Prevention that found the rate of fatal crashes to be lower and the accident rate for 18- and 19-year olds to be essentially the same. For more than a decade, many states have enacted laws to restrict their newest teen drivers, such as restricting the hours when they can get behind the wheel and whom they can bring along as passengers, and public officials believed they were saving lives. Now, this new study published in the latest edition of the Journal of the American Medical Association, suggests otherwise. When the researchers examined data on more than 131,000 fatal crashes involving teen drivers from all 50 states and the District of Columbia between 1986 and 2007, they found that the number of fatal crashes among 16- and 17-year-old drivers has fallen.

Good News, Bad News About Teen Driving Deaths

The number of 16 and 17-year-olds dying in car crashes went down 36 percent from 2004 to 2008. The overall number of teens dying on the road has steadily decreased since 1996, according to research compiled in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR), released in October by the Division of Unintentional Injury Prevention. But there’s still bad news. Car accidents remain the leading cause of teen deaths, accounting for 1/3 of teen fatalities every year. So, what’s driving the decline?