The Facts

• Motor vehicle crashes are the leading cause of death for teens in the United States, accounting for 41% of teen fatalities.
• More teens die in car crashes than the next four causes combined.

Department of Health and Human Services,
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

• Teens are nine times more likely to be in a car crash than their parents
• The crash rate increases 700% when teens are not driving with their parents

Teenage Drivers: Patterns of Risk, Journal of Safety Research, 2003 (15 year old rate estimated by comparing crash rates of 15 year olds with a learners permit with those of 16 and 17 year olds with full licenses)

• In 2003, 5,240 teens were killed in passenger-vehicle crashes, and 458,000 teens were injured.
• Driver fatalities for 15-20 year olds increased by 5 percent between 1994 and 2004.
• During 2003, a teen died in a traffic crash an average of once every hour on weekends.

National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA) Report – Teens at Risk.pdf

• Sixty-three percent of the fatally injured 16-to-20-year-old passenger vehicle occupants were not wearing seatbelts, compared to 55 percent for adults 21 or older.

NHTSA Report – Teenagers and Seatbelt Use

• Crashes involving young drivers typically are single-vehicle crashes, primarily run-off-the-road crashes that involve driver error and/or speeding.

Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) – Crash Statistics

• The presence of passengers strongly increases crash risk for teenage drivers; the more passengers the greater the risk.
• The crashes of youthful drivers are more likely to involve a single vehicle, driver error, and speeding.
• In 2000, 63 percent of the deaths of 13-19-year-old passengers occurred when other teenagers were driving.

Insurance Institute for Highway Safety - "Teenage Passengers in Motor Vehicle Crashes; A Summary of Current Research," December 2001