teen auto accident prevention tips
Distracted Teen Drivers May Pay the Price
A May 21, 2012 article in Tulsa World talks about the dangers that distracted teen drivers face. The article gives the example of a 16-year-old girl who got into an accident near Inola, Oklahoma, while talking to her friends while driving. Thankfully, in that accident, only one of the passengers suffered relatively minor injuries. However, the girl’s classmate was not as lucky. The other girl, also 16, overcorrected on a Rogers County road and died in the resulting accident. The two accidents were very similar and involved minor distractions caused by teens driving with young passengers on board.
Driving with younger passengers can be a significant risk for teen drivers. According to a study released recently by the AAA Foundation, the risk of car accident deaths for teen drivers increases exponentially with every passenger younger than 21 and quadruples with three or more young passengers. Teen drivers’ inexperience and their tendency to be more social than adults compound this risk. According to the Oklahoma Highway Safety Office’s statistics, teens make up 5.8 percent of Oklahoma’s licensed drivers but account for 12 percent of the state’s car accidents in 2010 and 7.5 percent of Oklahoma’s traffic fatalities.
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