Teen drivers would benefit from greater restrictions

Posted 02/13/2008
Teen drivers would benefit from greater restrictions

An UMTRI study finds that graduated driver licensing programs for teen drivers throughout the U.S. should be even more restrictive.

"Motor vehicle crashes are the greatest single health threat to teens," says Ray Bingham, research associate professor in UMTRI's Social and behavioral Analysis Division. "Little or no positive change has occurred in teen crash numbers in the past 10 to 15 years. Clearly, current measures aimed at curbing teen drivers’ involvement in crashes are not sufficient."

Bingham and colleagues Jean Shope (UMTRI research professor), Julie Parow (UMTRI research assistant), and Trivellore Raghunathan (biostatistics professor in U-M's School of Public Health) studied data from nearly 7,000 teen drivers, Michigan State Police crash records, and Michigan Secretary of State driver history records. They found teens are at excess risk for all crash types. "Inexperience, underdeveloped driving skills, and immaturity together contribute to poor performance of driving tasks," Bingham says. "Teens are about two-and-a-half times more likely to be in a crash than adults, but certain factors result in large increases in risk. One of these is having passengers. From other research, we know it is actually other teen passengers that pose the greatest risk, and we know that each additional passenger results in additional increase in crash risk."

Driving on weekends and at night are the next most common characteristics of teen driving that increase their crash risk. And when these things happen simultaneously—driving on a weekend night with passengers—they collectively contribute to substantial increases in teen crash risk.

While most states have passenger and night-time driving restrictions for teens, none limits driving on weekends. Graduated driver licensing (GDL) programs, the researchers say, should place restrictions on all of these interacting factors. GDL programs, they say, should move toward policies and restrictions that take more than one driving condition or characteristic into account at a time.

For more information:

• Read the report, "Crash Risk among Teen Drivers: Identification and Prediction of Excess Risk"
• Read the U-M press release
• Read an article in the Ann Arbor News