The crash rate for licensed 16-year-old drivers is “alarmingly high”

Teens armed with a brand new driver’s license expect much more driving freedom than their parents are willing to give them — suggesting that parents have a more realistic view of driving dangers, according to a survey.

“This discrepancy reflects a meaningful gap in teen-parent communication and understanding, and it identifies missed opportunities for parents to influence their teen’s motor vehicle safety,” says study author Keith Sherman, Ph.D., a research scientist at the Injury Prevention Center at Connecticut Children’s Medical Center, in Hartford. The research appears in the American Journal of Health Behavior.

The crash rate for licensed 16-year-old drivers is “alarmingly high,” according to the study. They are four times more likely to be involved in a motor vehicle crash than 20- to 24-year-old drivers are. Even though 16- to 19-year-olds represent only 5 percent of licensed drivers, they were involved in 12 percent of all fatal crashes in 1996, according to the study.

At least 30 states have enacted graduated driver licensing laws, intended to expose new drivers to complex driving situations and gain experience in stages under low-risk conditions. But, “despite the crash reductions achieved by [graduated licensing] legislation, teenagers continue to crash at a significantly higher rate than older drivers,” Sherman notes.

When Sherman and colleagues surveyed 613 Connecticut teens enrolled in commercial driving schools and a parent of each teen about driving issues, they found significant gaps between parent and teen expectations.

For example, while 67 percent of teens expected unlimited access to a vehicle, only 38 percent of parents expected to offer it. Nearly all (96 percent) of parents planned to insist on seatbelt use and impose drinking and driving restrictions, but only 78 percent and 82 percent of teens expected these restrictions, respectively.

Parents also planned to take tough stances regarding issues such as curfews and passenger limits, with far fewer teens expecting such restrictions.

“The pattern was the same for every restriction,” Sherman notes. “More parents than teens expected each restriction.”

The young study participants expressed awareness of many dangerous driving behaviors, including drinking and driving, not taking driving seriously, showing off, not wearing seatbelts and driving too fast for weather, road or traffic conditions.

But one activity teens misperceived as safe was late night driving. Teens driving after 9 p.m. are three times more likely to be involved in a fatal crash than during the daytime, according to the study.

Sherman and colleagues were generally optimistic about teen awareness of what it takes to be a safe driver, and they recommend more study of how teens gain this awareness, which may include Department of Motor Vehicles publications, as well as media coverage and school discussions.

But learning materials need to be more hard-hitting, the researchers say. “Critical driver safety information is reaching teens and parents but it needs to be more persuasive to motivate them to do what needs to be done to prevent teen motor vehicle crashes,” Sherman notes.

The parent’s role is thought to be crucial in keeping teen drivers safe — researchers have found that teens reporting risky driving behaviors were more than twice as likely to report low parental driving restrictions — but many questions remain unanswered. These include to what exact degree parents increase teen safety when they authoritatively manage teen driving, according to the study.

Funding for this research was provided by the Department of Health and Human Services’ Emergency Medical Services for Children.