National Teen Driver Safety Week Addresses Distracted Driving Issues

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is giving us the National Teen Driver Safety Week in hopes of focusing on teens and drivings issues, for instance, distracted driving. The week, which takes place from October 15 to October 21, 2017. The NHTSA wants parents to talk to their teens about the important rules they need to follow to stay safe behind the wheel, which includes limiting the distracted driving issues.

According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, motor vehicle crashes are the leading cause of death for teens (15 to 18 years old) in the United States – ahead of all other types of injury, disease, or violence. That is a crazy stat alone, as more and more teens are texting while driving. This distracted driving is leading to more and more accidents for teen drivers.

To show you how much texting and driving has become the “norm” among society, the NHTSA did a study and in 2013, 96 percent of the participants felt that texting while driving was a problem. In 2015, that number dropped down to 77 percent! In two years, 19 percent of people are less concerned about distracted driving. This shows how cell phones have taken over our lives, including behind the wheel of a car.

The National Teen Driver Safety Week is definitely needed, as crashes remain the leading cause of teen death. There were 1,972 teen drivers of passenger vehicles involved in fatal motor vehicle traffic crashes in 2015. An estimated 99,000 teen passenger vehicle drivers were injured in motor vehicle traffic crashes.

The National Safety Council compiled a list of statistics for National Teen Driver Safety Week, which may shock some people:

1. The most dangerous year of a teen’s life is the year he or she receives a license.
2. Half of all teens will be involved in a car crash before graduating from high school.
3. A teen’s crash risk is three times that of more experienced drivers.
4. After years of declines, teen driving crashes and fatalities are on the rise.
5. Just one teen passenger can increase a teen driver’s crash risk by 44 percent.
6. 75 percent of teen driver crashes occur because the teen made a critical error due to inexperience, such as driving too fast for conditions, not scanning for hazards or being distracted driving.
7. 52 percent of teens who are killed in a car crash are unbelted.
8. Cell phones are a huge driver of distraction for already inexperienced teen drivers, yet twelve states still allow some form of cell phone use for novice drivers.
9. About 20 percent of teen car crashes involve an underage drinking driver.

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