March 21, 2000
Filed at 4:02 p.m. EST
By The Associated Press
CHICAGO (AP) -- The more young people you
pack into a car with a teen-ager behind the wheel, the more likely the driver will die in
a crash, a study found.
The study, conducted by researchers at Johns Hopkins School of Public
Health in Baltimore, confirms what many parents have long suspected.
The problem is "general foolishness and distractions'' for
drivers who are just getting to know the rules of the road, said Robert Foss of the
University of North Carolina Highway Safety Research Center. `"Many people think
alcohol is the problem. But for that age group, it's really not.''
The study, published in Wednesday's Journal of the American Medical
Association, was based on federal data from 1992 through 1997.
Researcher Li-Hui Chen and her colleagues found that 16-year-olds
carrying one passenger were 39 percent more likely to get killed than those driving alone.
That increased to 86 percent with two passengers and 182 percent with three or more. The
rate for 17-year-olds was even |
higher: 48 percent, 158 percent and 207
percent respectively.
The rate was as much as 21 times higher during early morning hours
when passengers were present. Chen also found that the driver death rate increased
significantly when the passengers themselves were in their teens or 20s.
While the death statistics relate specifically to drivers, Foss said
other studies have shown that accidents involving new teen drivers also often kill or
seriously injure passengers and people in other vehicles.
The study was funded in part by the Insurance Institute for Highway
Safety and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The findings -- coupled with numbers showing teen accidents rates
increasing after 10 p.m. and even more dramatically after midnight -- are prompting safety
experts to renew their calls for stiffer restrictions on new drivers.
"It's pretty clear that states should not let them drive later at night for a
while and not let them drive with teen passengers,'' said Foss, who thinks the curfew
should be 10 p.m. "They need to focus their attention entirely on driving.'' |
Ten states -- most
recently Washington -- restrict the number or age of passengers who can ride with new teen
drivers. Twenty-eight states have driving curfews, most of them beginning at midnight. New
York, which imposes a 9 p.m. curfew on drivers under 18, is among the states with the
toughest restrictions.
Previous studies of young drivers in New Zealand, Canada and Florida
found that so-called graduated driver licensing reduced crashes by 7 percent to 32
percent, Foss said. Graduated systems impose passenger restrictions or curfews on young
drivers.
Foss, who wrote an editorial accompanying the study, said that in
states with no such rules, "parents of 16- and 17-year-old drivers would be
well-advised to impose the restrictions themselves.''
An email from: "Randall Thiel" randall.thiel@dpi.state.wi.us
Just wanted to share something a friend and colleague of mine up in our Policy and
Budget area shared with me from an associated press article he found...
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