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Posts about On the road
Teen drinking while driving drops by half
Posted by: Colleen Stoxen Updated: October 2, 2012 - 5:22 PM
The number of U.S. teenagers who drink and drive dropped by more than half from 1991 to 2011, federal health officials said Tuesday.
Nine out of 10 high school students age 16 and over said they did not drink and drive in 2011, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). This represents a decline of 54 percent over two decades.
Still, one in 10 -- or nearly one million students a month -- reported driving after consuming alcohol.
"Drinking and driving is risky for any driver, but especially for young teens," CDC director Dr. Thomas Frieden said. "Young drivers are 17 times more likely to die in a crash when they have a blood alcohol concentration of 0.08 than when they have not been drinking."
Car crashes remain the leading cause of death for teens, Frieden said. "There are more than 2,000 teens aged 16 to 19 killed on the road each year, and many of those deaths are alcohol-related," he said. One in five teen drivers involved in a fatal crash in 2010 had alcohol in their system, he added.
Read more from U.S. News.
Passengers increase risk of teen driver fatalities
Posted by: Colleen Stoxen Updated: May 8, 2012 - 1:53 PM
For generations, teenagers have been the most dangerous drivers on the road, crashing almost four times more often than older drivers. A study quantifies for the first time in a decade how their risk of a fatal crash multiplies when they have other teenagers in the car.
It increases by almost half when a 16- or 17-year-old driver has one teenage passenger; it doubles with two teen passengers; and it quadruples with three or more young passengers.
Using federal fatality statistics, the American Automobile Association Foundation for Traffic Safety provided that data that will support parents who have forbidden their teenage children from driving with other teenagers.
"We know that carrying young passengers is a huge risk, but it's also a preventable one," said AAA foundation President Peter Kissinger.
The AAA study is the latest of three recent reports to raise concerns about teenage drivers. The Governors Highway Safety Association reviewed preliminary data from the first six months of last year, finding a slight increase in the number of fatal crashes involving 16- and 17-year-old drivers. The governors' group said if the trend continued, 2011 would reverse a recent trend of declining teenage fatalities.
In another study, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration last month said its research found that drivers under the age of 24 were much more likely than more mature drivers to send and receive text messages while driving.
Read more from the Washington Post.
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