Posted on Thursday 10 April 2008
A study undertaken by the American Automobile Association (AAA) has found car crashes involving 15-17 year old teenagers cost the U.S. over $34 billion each year. The study takes into account a number of quantifiable factors related to crashes including the cost of medical expenses, lost work and property damage as well as other related costs such as loss of quality of life.
The study took into account data from 2006, during which there were almost one million crashes involving 15-17 year olds on U.S. roads. Of these, around 400,000 people were injured and 2,541 killed. These crashes that involved injuries accounted for the bulk of the $34 billion cost estimate because most required expensive ongoing medical costs.
On a dollars-per-incident basis, fatal crashes were found to be 76 times more expensive to society than regular injury crashes, with fatal crashes costing $3.8 million on average and injury crashes rating just $50,000.
The AAA claims the study proves legislators need to improve graduated driver licensing schemes in American states if they hope to counter the nearly one million crashes involving 15- to 17-year-olds annually. Graduated licensing will ensure teens get adequate practice before hitting the road solo. Graduated driver schemes have proven their benefit, with teens that undergo the program being almost 40% less likely to be involved in a fatal crash than their less experienced peers.
Similar schemes introduced in Australia in recent years have led to reductions in the death toll for young drivers, with numbers in the state of New South Wales alone dropping from 144 deaths in 2006 to 100 just one year later.
Other solutions include placing restrictions on night time driving and the number of allowable passengers.
*Cough* biased *cough* ! First off lets consider that this is an insurance company putting these figures forth. Second these accidents don’t not cost the American people $34 billion, they cost the insurance companies $34 billion. The AAA is an interest group, one part of this function is putting lobbyists on Capital Hill to influence legislators. The other part is “informing” the public (otherwise known as propaganda). By doing this they are able to increase their influence on legislators and get them to pass a bill which would have this “graduated driving program” (which sounds like a good idea but I would still like to know what it is). At the same time the bill would also carry a clause which might allow them to mandate a national speed limit or create a Nazi national highway patrol (ok, a bit extreme but still). The point is don’t let people spoon feed you stats and take them as fact (check who’s doing the research thats the most important).
I’ve posted previously about the Canadian graduated licensing system. Works well, and I think that the USA should adopt it.
What is it exactly?
I wonder how much people age 60+ cost insurance companies. Every single day I see
them do crazy things (for most part they drive like they are only people on road). What do we do about them? Make em drink Red Bull before they get behind wheel?
When you turn 16 you do a written test of 10 road sign questions and 10 general rules of the road questions. You have to get 80% to pass. This gives you a G1, you can drive with someone who has had a full license for 4 years. But there are time of day limitations and you can’t drive on a 400 series freeway as well as the passengers can’t be only G1 holders. And obviously you must have a blood alcohol of 0.
Then a year later you do a road test to get your G2. If you go to a driving school you only have to wait 8 months. This lets you drive alone any time on any highway or freeway. Still 0 blood alcohol.
Then a year later you do another road test for the G license, the permanent license. Now you can do anything and have a legal blood alcohol level.
But the big problem is that a lot of people buy a driving school certificate to get their license quicker and they never actually learned anything.
can i just say the fact that 15 year olds are allowed to drive a car in the USA is the most ridiculous idea ever….these kids arent responsible enough to do anything let alone get behind the wheel of a death trap.
Now anyone from other countries will agree in that at 15 even though we would get to have a a quick drive to the shops with dad or mum it scared the crap out of us to be on the road. let alone when its at night in the middle of a big storm.
Driviing age shoudl start at 17, then the restrictions should be in place as to the capacity of the cars they drive. Until they have a full license, that being 2 years after gaining their provisional license, they should be restricted on the capacity of the enginein the car they drive. Having a 5 litre V8 in the hands of a pimple faced 17 year old isnt smart and is dangerous to not only him/her but to others on the road. the max shoudl be a 2 litre 4 cylinder naturally aspirated engine. Sort of loosly based ont he principle of a motorbike license.
I’m 18 (19 in may) and proud to say that in all the years of driving no-one as much as honked at me
Now w/ that said am I saying I follow every single rule? hell no! I’ve done 140 just yesterday, but atleast I do it on a completely open road w/ no cops around - typically at 2-3 at night…
Oh and my 40 some year old neighbor does 50mph in our subdivision (in which speed limit is 15)- now talk about whos a more safer driver, a 18 year old or a 40 year old…
“the max shoudl be a 2 litre 4 cylinder naturally aspirated engine”
Now I realize what you’re trying to say there but that’s a very dumb choice of engine size. My dad’s Toyota Sienna has a 3.0 liter 6 cylinder. I’ve been driving it since I was 16, I’m 18 now. You can’t just say only 2 liter engines for the kids, that’s just dumb. What about the families that don’t have engines that small? My friends parents have a Dodge Caravan and a Honda Accord. So what cars should my friend drive? What about the large V8 SUVs that are shit slow and handle so crappy that you can’t drive like a maniac in them because you’re too scared to?
Any limitations can’t be based on just engine size. Power to weight ratios and the class the car is in need to be considered also. And you can’t dismiss a car because it’s not naturally aspirated either. What about the Smart ForTwo with a turbo? That’s just about the weakest piece of crap out there, it’s not dangerous to anyone.
I do understand what you were trying to say but those comments need more thought.
SS89 - due to being at work i dont have the time to spell it out completely what im attempting to get accross. As long as you get the general gist of whhat im implying then im happy with my contribution. The rest of it can be fleshed out at another time, as well as if i have the inclinitation to do so.
But i will make a comment on yours now though. The engine size isnt dumb. Maybe at a stretch put it out to 2.2 litres. This will stop the boy racers in WRX’s etc, and V8’s and V6s that are too powerful for such inexperienced hands.
Your comment on the larger than life SUVs that soccer mums and substituting for something fathers drive is quite simply ridiculous. What is the point of having an inexperienced pimply faced teenager driving a behemoth on the road? What you want to do is to ensure that they have a nimble car to teach them cornering, parking etc not something that has the turning circle of the Queen Mary. The fact that some families dont have the means to support another car is not and should not be an issue. The fact that money and lost lives due to accidents by inexperienced drivers will lessen if they are in more agile and smaller cars should be the factor.
As for the naturally aspirated engine ideal. Yes the Smart is (Supercharged i believe) not compliant, so point to that in that power issues could decide the criteria etc…nothing with more than 75kws of power though. This mark will allow Turbo diesels in aswell !
There you go. Im off back to work now
we’ve already discussed this whole thing in detail last year, before wizards, ink, ivan, or stephen were here…..
SS nailed the graduated licensing. I took the driver’s ed option and all i have to say is that its a good idea; it gives people incentive to go to drivers school. I dont know what your impressions are of driving school but you dont just drive around and get a certificate. I did Young Drivers (ford owned program, clearly) and they had me take a focus onto a gravel road and do a “moose test”. if you dont know what that is, look it up. needless to say, the drivers ed was worth the 400$, just to be able to do that.
another point that has been mentioned that we already hashed out last year is regarding power figures. I think the one thing that makes the most sense is limiting young drivers to a certain vehicle weight and power to weight ratio. forced induction is becoming too common to rule it out. i think it would be short sighted to rule out FWD, RWD, AWD, etc… just make sure that a young driver isnt able to drive a full sized car, pickup, or van (not a minivan, a full on frame van). nothing over 2 tonnes. thats for sure. and then some power to weight ratio that would exclude racers like the STi, Evo, Speed3, mustang GT (you can trust a youngn’ with a v6 pony), corvette.. etc. you may even want to consider making it such that a young driver couldnt drive a C30 (AWD 220 hp in a compact hatch? thats pretty iffy to me).
but like SS stated, a lot of parents dont own small cars. they’ll have minivans and midsized cars, which almost certainly have 3-4L v6’s.
graduated licensing is the way to go and personally i think that we could use more restrictions than what ontario is already using (see SS89’s post).
personally I believe that you should have to road test for a full sized car, truck, or van, or anything over a certain weight. that’s already the case for trucking licenses, there are many different grades of trucking license. so why is it that the same license that allows you to drive a 1 tonne city car also allows you to drive a 2 tonne pickup that could easily fit that same city car in the box? it really doesnt make sense to me.
you want to ’save the planet’? graduated licensing would be a good deterrent to stop people from even bothering to drive a truck. “aww man i have to road test a truck just to be able to get a license to drive it legally?” at least this would have prevented the stupid soccer mom who plowed into my girlfriend’s 1994 saturn while driving an H2 that she clearly couldnt control. she never would have gotten the damned license in the first place.
Maybe the best choice would just be a list of restricted vehicles? Because this whole thing can get very very complicated.
The idea of doing the road test in a realistic sized car is a good one. I did my G2 road test in my dad’s Sienna! It was the biggest thing there. I passed the first time, the only thing was that it was too big to fit between the parallel parking pylons so I just did that on a residential street. And I’m definitely planning on doing the G road test in the Sienna as well.
I also went to Young Drivers. I took the 4 day March Break course. I learned in one of those behemoth Chrysler Intrepids. The thing was a few inches longer than my dad’s van! I did the whole defensive driving thing and the whole emergency situations dealy.
My school actually had a driver’s ed program which was really cheap, and we actually learned a lot as we did both classroom and on the road classes (I guess thats what you would call them). In Louisiana we were required to complete a driver’s ed class before getting a restricted license in which someone who was over 21 had to be in the car and have a valid drivers license, also there were night driving restrictions (15 was the minimum age for this). You could not get a full-license until you were 17, this also meant that you would have to take a road test. Oh, I forgot to mention that the restricted license has a written test, as does the regular license if you did not get a restricted prior to obtaining a full. Honestly, everyone should probably have to take driver’s refresher courses every two years from the date they obtained the license. By the way ink Master, 140 is not the type of speed we need people doing on our public roads, I know it seems like that the road is “completely open” but I can’t tell you how many fatal accidents happen due to the fact that drivers think that no one is on the road and doing speeds in excess of 100. Look up some race tracks in your area. Its a much more fun place to go fast and is very, very safe.