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Statistics you should know...

14% of all deaths due to motor vehicle accidents are teen drivers.

Most teen driver deaths due to motor vehicle accidents occur on weekends 53% of the time.

Teen drivers killed in motor vehicle accidents had a youth passenger in automobile 45% of the time. More facts below.

Of teen drivers fatally injured in automobiles, more than 1/3 were speed related accidents.

Teen lifestyle of staying up late make teen drivers a high risk to have an automobile accident due to drowsiness.

More than any age group, teens are likely to be involved in a single vehicle crash.

On the basis of current population trends, there will be 23% more 16-20- year-old drivers on the road in 2010 than there are today -- 26.1 million.

This age group makes up 7% of licensed drivers, but suffers 14% of fatalities and 20% of all reported accidents.

The 16-year-old population alone will increase from 3.5 million to over 4 million by 2010.

Many factors contribute to the cause of  teen deaths in motor vehicles. Looking at the causes, it's not hard to see why teen accident and death rates are higher than older drivers'.

Teen drivers are more likely than older drivers to be the cause of their accidents. That is based on facts pointing to high rates of teen accidents involving one vehicle.

Immaturity is a contributing factor to the high rate of auto crashes and deaths among teenagers. For instance, tailgating and not using safety belts are misjudgments teens make more than older drivers.

YRealm

April 19, 2005 06:27 PM

Meh, I'd say sixteen. Honestly I believe when a person is sixteen they have the capability to be mature and responsible enough to drive. Now whether they choose to actually show their maturity and responsibility is another story, one of which the state and federal courts should have no bering on.

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MRI brain scans show the risk assessment part of the brain isn't complete until age 24 to 25
By most physical measures, teenagers should be the world’s best drivers. Their muscles are supple, their reflexes quick, their senses at a lifetime peak. Yet car crashes kill more of them than any other cause — a problem, some researchers believe, that is rooted in the adolescent brain.

A National Institutes of Health study suggests that the region of the brain that inhibits risky behavior is not fully formed until age 25, a finding with implications for a host of policies, including the nation’s driving laws.

“We’d thought the highest levels of physical and brain maturity were reached by age 18, maybe earlier, so this threw us,” said Dr. Jay Giedd, a pediatric psychiatrist leading the study, which released its first results in April. That makes adolescence “a dangerous time, when it should be the best.”

Legislative actions
Last month, Republican state Sen. William Mims cited brain-development research in proposing a bill in the Virginia Legislature that would ban cellphone use in vehicles for drivers younger than 18. It passed Friday.

In Maryland, Dels. Adrienne Mandel and William Bronrott said the research could bolster three bills the Montgomery County Democrats submitted to the Legislature on Friday. The bills would expand training and restrict passenger numbers and cellphone use for certain teenage drivers.

The measures also are supported by crash statistics and a soon-to-be released study from Temple University, which used a driving-style test to show that young people consistently take greater risks when their friends are watching.

“This goes toward supporting evidence that the judgment of teens further deteriorates with distractions. These crashes are preventable,” Mandel said.

The research has implications beyond driving: Attorneys cited brain-development studies as the U.S. Supreme Court considered whether juvenile offenders should be eligible for the death penalty. The court is expected to reach a decision by midyear.

A role for neuroscience
Critics of brain-imaging research — and Giedd himself — emphasize that there is no proven correlation between brain changes and behavior. Giedd, however, said that the duration and depth of the study means “it’s time to bring neuroscience to the table” in the teen-driving debate.

At Temple University in Philadelphia, psychology professor and researcher Laurence Steinberg plans a new study: scanning teenagers’ brains while they perform a task that simulates driving decisions, in an effort to understand the biological underpinnings of risk-taking among young people.

Giedd intends to pursue similar studies with his subjects, focusing on ways to give young people, and those responsible for them, more tools for beating the odds.

Teenagers are four times as likely as older drivers to be involved in a crash and three times as likely to die in one, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.

Lily and Zoe Ulrich, 15-year-old identical twins from Frederick, Md., have been part of Giedd’s study at NIH for two years. When they signed up, they answered questions about their diet, athletics, social habits, peer pressure, language skills and intellectual achievements.

The blond, 5-foot-4 sisters wear glasses, earn straight A’s and often finish each other’s sentences. They will receive their learner’s permits this month. “I’m excited … it’s really cool,” Lily said. “I’m a little more nervous,” said Zoe. “We think the same a lot of the time, but not always.”

Giedd would like to know why.

In his closet-size office in NIH’s sprawling Building 10, the fruit of 13 years’ work appears. It’s an eight-second, time-lapse film of the brain, swept by a vivid blue wave symbolizing maturing gray matter. The color engulfs the frontal lobes, and ends, in “a direct hit,” Giedd said, with the dorsal-lateral prefrontal cortex, just behind the brow.

About as thick and wide as a silver dollar, this region distinguishes humans from other animals. From it, scientists believe, come judgments and values, long-term goals, the weighing of risks and consequences — what parents call wisdom or common sense and what science calls “executive functions.”

While society and tradition have placed the point of intellectual maturity, the “age of reason,” years earlier, the study — an international effort led by NIH’s Institute of Mental Health and UCLA’s Laboratory of Neuro Imaging — shows it comes at about age 25.

The process is generally completed a year or two earlier in women but varies greatly from person to person. Why that is, Giedd said, “We still don’t know.”

“We have to find out what matters. Diet? Education, video games? Medicine, parenting, music? Is the biggest factor whether you’re a musician or a jock or the amount of sleep you get?”

As important, Giedd said, is the study’s finding that the brain matures in a series of fits and starts. While it remains to be proven, he said, this “may be a key to when the brain is most receptive” to learning certain skills, such as driving.

The study, which is ongoing, involves scanning the brains of 2,000 people ages 4 through 26 using magnetic resonance imaging, a radiation-free tool that permits researchers to view the organs of healthy people in minute detail.

Every two years, study participants come to the Bethesda-based National Institute of Mental Health, where they are scanned and interviewed. Half the children are healthy, and half have brain-related disorders. In the next phase, researchers plan to focus almost solely on twins, hoping to expand beyond the 180 pairs participating now, to measure the impact of environmental factors on the maturing brain.

Giedd said he’s been bashed by teenagers who said the study suggests they’re brain-damaged. On the contrary, he said: “Teenagers’ brains are not broken; they’re just still under construction.”

The findings imply that many life choices — college and career, marriage and military service — often are made before the brain’s decision-making center comes fully online. But for young adults, “Dying on a highway is the biggest risk out there,” Giedd said. “What if we could predict earlier in life what could happen later?”

Temple’s Steinberg said the NIH/UCLA research supports his theory that teen recklessness is partly the result of a critical gap in time — starting with the thrill-seeking that comes in puberty and ending when the brain learns to temper such behavior. Since children today reach puberty earlier than previously, about age 13, and the brain’s reasoning center doesn’t reach maturity until the mid-20s, Steinberg said, “This period of recklessness has never been as long as it is now.”

Peer pressure
In a study to be published this year, Temple researcher Margo Gardner and Steinberg illustrated the impact of peer pressure on risk-taking. Volunteers in three age groups — 13 to 16, 18 to 22 and 24 and older — were told to bring two friends to the study, which involved an arcade-style driving game.

To “win,” participants guided a car through a course as quickly as possible. Periodically, a yellow warning light flashed, and some time later a “wall” popped up. If players hit it, they lost all their “points.”

Participants took the test alone and with their friends in the room. Researchers found that those in the two younger groups consistently took more chances with friends present. Those 24 and older behaved equally cautiously, regardless of whether friends were watching.

The results help show why teenagers are more likely to drink, take drugs or commit crimes in groups, he said. They’re also reflected in auto-crash statistics.

According to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, the chances of a crash by a 16- or 17-year-old driver are doubled with two peers in the vehicle and quadrupled with three or more. “Every passenger you add increases the risk,” said Alan Williams, chief scientist at the institute. The brain and behavior studies, he said, “certainly tie in with what we know.”

Cracking down
After a spate of teen driving deaths across the Washington region in the fall, Maryland is attempting to join Virginia and the District of Columbia in limiting the number of unrelated passengers in cars with young drivers. In addition to cellphone restrictions that the Maryland and Virginia legislatures are considering, Maryland Gov. Robert Ehrlich Jr. is backing a measure that would revoke the licenses of convicted drunken drivers under age 21, for as long as five years.

Steinberg said he agrees with such approaches. “We have to limit the harm adolescents [encounter], rather than to try and change them.”

The best way to do that, he added, “is by passing laws.”

Copyright © 2005 The Seattle Times Company

Ganondorf718

April 19, 2005 07:01 PM

http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/co...n.overview.html

Click States and look at that part of the constitution, somewhere in there it states the powers of the states, and among the many powers the government gives states, the driving age fals into one of those catagories... Listen in Government class... therefore it would be unconstitutional...

SkItZo

April 19, 2005 06:26 PM

If you're 18, you're still considered a teenager. You have becomed a full pledged adult by the age of 21 in the states I believe. Here in canada, it's 19. I don't think they should move up the age to allow driving, but to limit access of alcohol to underaged drinkers.

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Teen drivers are more likely than older drivers to be the cause of their accidents. That is based on facts pointing to high rates of teen accidents involving one vehicle

PhranK

April 20, 2005 02:22 AM

Statistics can be made to show just about anything, as can selective citation of research.

Chronological age actually has very litte to do with anything, and therefore shouldn't be used as a determining factor in most of the things we use it for.

Not only is it unfair and irrational to decide that a 16 year old (or even a 10 year old) shouldn't be allowed to drive based on their age, it's unfair, irrational, and dangerous to decide that an 18 year old or even a 50 year old should be able to drive based on their age.

The problem isn't age, it's skill, training, and experience.
If you're tall enough that you can physically operate all aspects of a vehicle at age 12, and you've been taught well, and had a lot of practice, I see no reason you shouldn't be given a license.

You can't just assume that because somebody is young, they're going to have bad judgement and do stupid things and not be able to refrain from showing off for their friends or make other similar bad decisions, just as you can't assume that because somebody is old, they'll have good judgement and not to show off for their friends or that hot blonde that passed them, or that they'll have good enough judgement not to put on makeup, talk on their phone, eat a cheeseburger with one hand and drink with the other while driving with their knees, drive home from work at night when their nightvision is poor and they're tired and pissed off, or whatever.

Not that I think putting on your makeup, using the phone, eating, or all sorts of other things while driving are necessarily bad, but for starters, you have to be skilled enough to do it, and secondly, there's only certain circumstances where anything like that is safe, so you have to know if you can do it and if you should do it.

I've been driving for nearly 20 years, and I know from experience that the most dangerous drivers are the elderly, by far.
But good luck trying passing laws to take away their licenses when they reach a certain age.
They have the AARP and other political lobbies to keep that from ever happening.
Nor should it happen.
Because there's nothing wrong with somebody driving at age 110 if they can do well, but there is with somebody at 80 if they can't.
Or 60.
Or 18.

After the elderly, the next most dangerous would probably be 30-50 year olds, because firstly, they're always going to and from work (or WalMart or whatever) in a hurry and usually pissed off at somebody or distracted while they're at it, plus they've started developing vision problems but are reluctant to admit it to themselves and get it taken care of, and there's just so many of them out there.

Teenagers, as a whole, are probably lesser skilled drivers, but that's mostly due to lack of experience, and they might take more risks, but that's mainly because they have less to lose and tend to think bad things happen to the other guy, both of which are why teens take more risks in general, not just when driving.
But I don't think any predisposition toward taking risks is why teens get in so many accidents.
They're just not taught properly, and they don't have the experience to know what will happen when they veer into another lane at 65mph to go around some foolish old lady that pulled out in front of them going 45.
They haven't learned how much further ahead you have to start breaking when it's raining, or whatever.
Not that all adults ever manage to learn such things either, but it's hard not to after years of driving and many near-accidents.

What we need, instead of silly and useless age-based laws in general, are laws based on demonstrable and measurable criteria.
And, what we need most as far as driving goes, is a hell of a lot more training and testing before anyone, regardless of age, is ever allowed on a public road.
I'd estimate that probably only 5% of those of any age driving in the US are adequately trained and skilled.
The rest are accidents waiting to happen.