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The number of people killed on U.S. highways fell in 2011 for the sixth straight year, the longest streak of declines in the nation’s history, Bloomberg reports.
Crash fatalities are down 1.7 percent to 32,310 from a year earlier, NHTSA data shows. How can you counteract this alarming trend? Pile young people in the car.
A new report by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety shows that the likelihood of a 16- or 17-year-old driver being killed in a crash increases with each additional young passenger in the vehicle.
- One passenger younger than 21 (and no older passengers): 44 percent riskier
- Two passengers younger than 21 (and no older passengers): 100 percent riskier.
- Three or more passengers younger than 21 (and no older passengers): 300 percent riskier.
Put one passenger aged 35 or older in the car, and a teen driver’s risk of death goes down by 62 percent.
Bertel, this is definitely an alarming trend if you’re one of the Government Safety goons.
How do you enact laws that fine people for talking on their phones in the car, when every trend shows that the roads are safer every year?
How do you enact ever-tougher safety standards on the auto companies which effectively strangle them?
I know how. You basically ignore the vital information from this article. I don’t see this piece of information on any mainstream news site like CNN or Fox.
must… create… more… laws. do it for the children.
“How do you enact laws that fine people for talking on their phones in the car, when every trend shows that the roads are safer every year?”
Not a fan of ham-handed intrusion whether it be city or federal, and I question the effectiveness of cell phone laws, but this question is a bit short-sighted. What if even fewer people would have died if cell phone use were curtailed? 32,000 is a lot of people to die due to what almost always is driver error. If several thousand of those lives could be saved by simply not yapping on our phones while behind the wheel, then why not get off the phone?
More lives could be saved by banning hot coffee in the car.
@30-mile fetch
I hate to drop this hyperbolic question on you since your response is reasonably measured, but since no one else would take the bait here it is-Assuming you accept that “0” is not going to happen, what number of deaths are you willing to accept?
“If several thousand of those lives could be saved by simply not yapping on our phones while behind the wheel…”
Crash data almost suggests the opposite. Fatal crash rates for those using their phones are **lower** than they are for those who aren’t using them.
The distraction issue is a complicated one. An aggressive driver who is distracted may be preferable to an aggressive driver who has his attention focused on the task of driving aggressively. Car control doesn’t save lives.
Why not just drive that number down to zero? It would be very simply, though not popular, to do so.
The three times I topped my car out was when I had two buddies (all under age 21) in the car with me. Likewise one of my buddies topped out his Maxima w/me in the car. Def some truth to the statement.
In Europe they have a heavily graduated licensing system for motorcycles. I think we should do the same for teen drivers. That is a place where I would be OK w/the GPS monitoring. Kids are stupid as **** and need to be protected from themselves.
Actually, in a number of U.S. jurisdictions, including the DC metro area, there are such graduated licenses, which don’t grant “full” privileges until 21. Until then, there are hour limits, limits on the number of under 21s in the car, etc. (Can’t remember the details, ’cause my kids are well past that age now.
The only graduated portion of licenses in Minnesota is that you can’t use a phone or have more than one non-related passenger when you receive you provisional license at 16. These restrictions are lifted at 18, and the only thing your 21 and over license allows for is the purchase of alcohol (can’t use an expired license even if you’re of age).
I think we need graduated licensing for motorcycles as well. A 25 year old idiot was arrested f0r going 166 on the NYS thruway. In Japan they have a three tier system starting at <400 cc and if you monkey around too much then you don't move up to the next class. HP directly affects behavior on bikes among young riders, to think otherwise is to kid oneself.
Cars are much the same except there are safety features on all cars which mitigate the dangers a bit. Many states ban young drivers having young passengers without an adult. While this appears to be a nanny state action there is ample proof teenagers cause problems if left to their own devices in a vehicle.
Tiered motorcycle licensing won’t work in the US for a number of reasons.
1) A surprisingly high percentage of motorcyclists in the US never bother to get a license at all, and (unsurprisingly) these are the ones doing most of the crashing. Even if you require motorcycle dealerships to check the buyer’s license tier before a sale, people selling used sportbikes on Craigslist certainly won’t bother.
2) The lowest, introductory tier would be (at minimum) 883cc, because godforbid you can’t buy a Harley as your first bike in the United States of America. For motorcycle manufacturers that aren’t as incompetent as Harley, that kind of displacement corresponds to something like 130 peak horsepower.
3) Yes, the teenager doing 150MPH wheelies down the Interstate gets a lot of attention, but still, fully 50% of motorcycle collisions are caused by a car driver turning left across a motorcyclist’s right of way in an intersection, which is incredibly specific for being 50% of all collisions, when you think about it.
Other countries are able to implement tiered licensing, you mean Americans can’t?
None of the reasons listed, especially the 883 Harley example, are reasons not to implement a tier. If taken at face value, why have licenses or insurance since Craiglist sellers don’t check for documentation.
Other countries have a different motorcycling culture. (And their drivers are a bit more aware of their surroundings, too.)
You can implement a tier, sure, it just won’t accomplish the goals you’re trying to achieve, is my point. You don’t want to implement a tiered system for its own sake, you want to do it to reduce fatalities, right? Demonstrate that it will actually do so. When half the collisions are caused by a car driver violating right-of-way and 24% involved unlicensed motorcyclists, I’m not buying that changing the license requirements will do much.
I’d be curious as to how that happens, since a driver’s license for the owner is required to register the vehicle and obtain license plates for it. In most states driving on someone else’s plates subjects both the driver and the original owner of the plates to fines. In DC, for example, when you sell a car, you are required to turn in the plates to the DMV.
I assume your “lowest introductory tier” is a joke. When European and Japanese bikes first became popular in the U.S. in the 1960s, the smallest was a Honda 50 and the typical road bike as a 500 or 650.
Regarding accident statistics for car-motorcycle crashes, what was the speed of the bike at the time of the crash and how did that speed compare with the speed limit? If the bike is closing the left-turning car at 1.5x the speed limit, it’s pretty hard for the car to judge the closing speed of the bike. And, in every jurisdiction non-emergency vehicles exceeding the speed limit do not have the right of way. IOW, if a bike doing 45 in a 30 zone runs into me while I’m making a left turn, it’s his fault, not mine.
And that was in the 1960s. Today, the smallest-displacement American-manufactured bike displaces 883cc, and there is no way that any kind of national tiered license system will pass that requires new riders to purchase an imported bike. That’s just not getting through a legislature; Harley has too much cultural influence for that. Tailoring the tiers towards something that sneaks Harley through, like a low power-weight ratio, might work. Would an inexperienced rider on a heavy, difficult-to maneuver cruiser get into fewer accidents than one on an overpowered supersport? Who knows.
As for the other bit, for obvious reasons there isn’t precise data on how fast everyone involved was going in every collision ever, but from experience it seems that most drivers can’t judge the closing speed (or even notice the existence) of a motorcycle at any speed much of the time. (Moreover, even a 250cc bike can break the speed limit in any jurisdiction in the US, so, again, this doesn’t say much about a tiered license system.)
Basically, a tiered licensing system presupposes (1) that most accidents are caused by someone on a high-power bike doing something stupid, (2) that if they were on a low-powered bike they’d act less stupid, and (3) that setting up a tiered license system will get them off of a high-powered bike. I’m not convinced that any of these three things are true.
It’s not hard to ride a motorcycle without a license since many police jurisdictions have a formal or informal “do not pursue” policy regarding speeding motorcycles. Sport bikes are just too fast and nimble to catch with a Crown Vic, and the opportunity for death or injury is too high. Therefore you don’t need a license if you know the police are not going to pursue you.
As an aside, outside my former workplace an unlicensed sport bike rider saw a cop, panicked, took off, reached 100mph, then did not make the turn in front of my office and slid along the 6 foot cyclone fence. Ever see cheese go through a cheese grater? They just washed him away with a fire hose.
To hell with Harley Davidson and their market share. I’ve been riding over 35 years, and the number of people asking me for advice on learning to ride went into four figures years ago. And, with one exception, I’ve lost every one of them when I tell them that they absolutely do NOT want: a. A Harley, or, b. A 600/1000cc sportbike as their first motorcycle.
As much as I’m against more government, the one exception for that is support of a British style of motorcycle licensing. Which means (I may be out of date, these are the last figures I can remember):
1. 250cc/33hp maximum
2. A big red dorky “L” on the front and back of your bike to tell the world that you don’t know what you’re doing.
After a certain period of time as experiences are increased, both restrictions are lifted. Yes, that means you’re not cool from Day 1. That’s part of the idea, you earn the right to be cool. And having to put up with being a motorized dork for awhile adds a certain (badly needed) amount of seriousness to your situation.
Nobody has to have a Harley for their first bike. Nor a Gixxer, Fireblade, Ninja or R-whatever. Honda makes a downright gorgeous CBR250R that doesn’t look like a beginner bike in the slightest, and the old Rebel and Nighthawk are still available.
i like the DUI charge for the passengers……
@DC Bruce
In the State of Maine anyway, there is absolutely no requirement to have a driver’s license to insure and register a vehicle. My Grandfather no longer has a license, yet technically he owns and insures the family VW Routan. My Mom happens to live with them as their caretaker and does all the driving – my Grandparents are in their late 80s now. I have never been asked for a license when insuring or registering anything.
I too fail to see the point of tiered licensing for motorcycles though. Even the lowest powered bikes are faster than most cars, so what is the point. At least USUALLY, doing something stupid on a bike only kills the rider. And we NEED that supply of fresh young donor organs. Actually, there is a good law to pass – kill yourself while young and stupid and you are an automatic organ donor!
Don’t most states have this for drivers? It’s hard to say since our license structure is a mishmash of varying state laws, but as a 16 y.o driver in FL, I couldn’t drive after 11, and not after 1 as a 17 y.o.
The biggest things I would like to see in licensing are:
– A limit on power (expressed as lbs/hp) for young drivers.
– A stipulation that you cannot drive a vehicle significantly larger/heavier than what you tested in*.
– Better tests… A driving test should be more in line with an MSF test – there should be emergency swerves and stops.
* If you’ve ever had the displeasure of waiting several minutes for some housewife in a Chevrolet MomJeans XL… I mean Suburban… to execute a 17 point turn and get out of a parking space, you’ll be with me on that one!
“Chevrolet MomJeans XL”
How else you gonna get 2 kids to and from the grocery store?
30-mile fetch
That sounds like a job for the Canyonero. The drivers can take advice from Weird Al on how to drive with their high heels on.
“I’d be curious as to how that happens, since a driver’s license for the owner is required to register the vehicle and obtain license plates for it. In most states driving on someone else’s plates subjects both the driver and the original owner of the plates to fines. In DC, for example, when you sell a car, you are required to turn in the plates to the DMV.”
DC is not a state and in most states the plates (and insurance) go with the vehicle, not the driver. How does DC do this with business-owned passenger vehicles?
Aristurtle is completely correct.
Harley Davidson and older new riders are 100% the reason graduated licensing will not be enacted. The japanese companies would love to have a government created market for bikes they already manufacture.
Plus when you take into consideration there are already laws that regulate almost everything that get motorcyclists killed (speed limits, dui laws) except someone in a car running into you what’s the use of another one targeting motorcyclists and putting them on a bike that will sometimes make it harder to get out of the way of errant drivers because of a lack of power.
I guess you could require motorcycles to have bright daytime running lights and set some minimum sound level. Loud pipes save lives!
Those of us with teenagers are painfully aware of this through the crushing annual auto insurance bills.
Wait! So we older folks CAN drive and use cell phones?
How can it be, in this day and age when the horrid cell phones are causing so much hell can the accident rate be dropping?
OK…maybe its the “stupid” younger drivers…or the driver that can’t drive under any circumstance, that is causing the problem.
Ray TheHood is demanding all cell phone use be banned from all cars.
I am trying to understand his position. But the hood from Illinois seems to enjoy demanding from a position of authority rather than a position of statistical strength.
Seems to me the cell is not the issue. Its stupid drivers. The problem is drivers who could not drive well without any distraction…especially that of another stupid person in the car…the group stupid theory rises again.
He would have had me shot if he ever saw me driving around doing sales in the 90’s. For 20 years I put on over 2K miles a month…driving with my knees, holding a whopper in one hand, reading a map and reaching into the back seat for a customer’s file…never had a ticket or accident.
“driving with my knees, holding a whopper in one hand, reading a map and reaching into the back seat for a customer’s file…never had a ticket or accident.”
Maybe other drivers were just paying better attention than you were and were adroit at dodging you. I see a lot of distracted drivers that have no clue that they have been leaving their lane and keeping wildly inconsistent speed.
There was a study a few years ago showing that most people thought they could drive just as well while on a cell phone as they could without it. Only a tiny minority actually could. Statistically speaking, you have a much better chance of falling into that category.
Well stupid and cell phone use go hand in hand. I find it particularly disturbing when a driver finds it more convenient to text somebody else rather than being bothered to talk on a cell phone if they must while they drive. I know of one particular idiot (you guys are so lucky to have him in upstate New York) who considers texting while driving to be a mark of accomplishment.
Cell phone use and texting are completely different arguments.
Just as making a whopper is versus eating one.
30-mile fetch seems to ignore the fact that I drove over 2K per month for over 20 years. And I was indeed one of the first to use a car phone…and those days my monthly bills were close to 2 grand per month at times, all due to the damned analog system these early, gigantic phones used.
Stupid and cell phone use do not go hand in hand. No more so than turning a radio channel or looking at the wife in the rear seat or yelling at the kids.
These are all multi tasking skills required not just for driving, but life itself.
And yes…some folks can’t do multi-tasking.
But the dumbing down to the lowest denominator is an illness of our times.
Not just with our laws, but even the way our leaders speak to us in one-line phases.
We are not all stupid people. We should not all be treated as such.
“Cell phone use and texting are completely different arguments”
Not necessarily; one is just a more extreme version of the other. Cell phone use takes part of your attention away from the road and inhibits driving ability. That’s more or less a proven fact. Most people cannot drive as attentively while using a cell phone. And most people who believe they can actually cannot. Only a small percentage can. I won’t deny that you may be in that small percentage, but by definition the odds are…small.
So whether lucky or exceptionally skilled, you deserve congratulations for 20 years of consequence-free distracted driving.
“Cell phone use takes part of your attention away from the road and inhibits driving ability.”
This is madness.
This generalize statement is what drives me to drinking…
What in hell doesn’t distract you from the act of driving?
Its to what extent the distraction we are supposed to be evaluating here…
That and the rights and abilities of individuals.
We simply cannot make everybody dumb down to the skill level of teenagers or drunkards.
If we cannot as logical and intelligent folks keep to the numbers, what chance do we have of ever making decisions in life?
This is like all those statements on TV…”Many people say…”
Really…HOW many? Who are they?
Not madness. Here’s some numbers: http://www.unews.utah.edu/old/p/062206-1.html. Refute it if you want, but your personal experience is anecdotal. Didn’t save a citation for the “most people drive much more poorly using cell phones than they think they do” study, so I can’t provide you with that.
But you bring up a good point. There are a lot of distractions outside of cell phones. Laws won’t stop this; it needs to be the personal choice of drivers. So folks who are logical and intelligent should put the phone down, put the makeup down, & stop futzing with the kids in the backseat while driving.
Regarding personal rights: keep in mind that like distractions, not all personal rights are equal. I think Person A’s right to talk on a phone is subservient to Person B’s right to get home safely. Person A won’t like that view until they become Person B.
Anyhow, if my nannying and generalizing is driving you to drink, please don’t get behind the wheel afterwards :)
“Refute it if you want”
Instead of reading a press release, read the actual study, and then compare it to other research.
For one thing, it isn’t a study of real world crash data. It’s a simulator study. You need to pay attention to the methodology.
It’s a controlled study that controls for all of the variables except braking. The subjects do not control the speed, following distance, route chosen, etc. And indeed, it illustrates that drivers who drive with a phone would crash more than they would without one if they did not otherwise adjust their driving behavior.
But in the real world, drivers on phones don’t behave like that. The very same researcher whom you quote also prepared this other, less sensational study, that contradicts your position:
____________________
when drivers conversed on the cell phone, they made fewer lane changes, had a lower overall mean speed, and a significant increase in travel time in the medium and high density driving conditions. Drivers on the cell phone were also much more likely to remain behind a slower moving lead vehicle than drivers in single-task condition.
____________________
http://www.psych.utah.edu/AppliedCognitionLab/LC.pdf
The crash data doesn’t confirm the position that phone usage and drunk driving are equivalents. Naturalistic research such as this provides some probable reasons why. The phone may be distracting, but the distracted driver compensates for the phone distraction with other behaviors that can offset the risk. They may even overcompensate, which could explain why phone user crash involvement is less than that of those who don’t use phones.
Valid points, so I’ll step away from assertions that cell use causes more wrecks. But that wasn’t the primary point of my posts. My main position is not that cell phone use causes as many wrecks as drunk driving. My position is that cell phone use tends to make us poorer drivers whether we recognize that or not. The studies you cite seem to support that, unless compensating for the distraction by holding up traffic in the right lane and refusing to change lanes when you otherwise would is not considered “poorer”. In any case, you are still compensating for a distraction. The authors concluded this behavior could significantly alter traffic flow, particularly when combined with other results of cell phone use: changes in perceptual judgment and changes in brake reaction time & following behavior.
I was already aware that this was a driving simulator study, not analysis of real world crash data; the news release was a convenient link. I am curious about what real-world accident data shows, so if you have already run into any of those studies, send ‘em my way.
“My position is that cell phone use tends to make us poorer drivers whether we recognize that or not.”
You’re confusing technical driving skill and finesse with appropriate public policy objectives, namely to reduce the number and severity of crashes.
Phone users tend to be sloppy. They can be annoying to deal with. But aggressive drivers are a genuine hazard.
Distracted driving may be somewhat positive, at least to a point. If a driver uses inappropriate speeds, excessive lane changes and tailgating as replacement activities for his phone usage, then we’re probably better off if he calls his mother, instead. If he replaces it with staring out of the wrong window (which is the leading cause of distracted driving crashes), then the distraction remains and there is no statistical improvement in crash rates. The phone per se is not the problem.
Technically precise driving and better car control will not reduce crash rates. Because of that, there isn’t much reason to argue for more of them. Calming drivers down and using nanny devices to reduce their ability to crash would be a better use of resources.
Note – the DEATH rate is dropping, nobody said nothing about the accident rate dropping. You are just less likely to get KILLED in a car than ever before. Which makes sense – cars are built like bunkers these days, and emergency care gets better and better every year.
I would expect the number of deaths to drop every year simply due to the older less-safe cars dropping out of use. Doesn’t mean there aren’t more and more fender-benders every year due to distracted driving. Provided you are wearing your seatbelt, you have to try pretty hard to kill yourself in a modern car. Or be really unlucky.
“nobody said nothing about the accident rate dropping.”
Overall crash rates have also declined. We have fewer fatalities, fewer injuries and fewer wrecks.
http://www.bts.gov/publications/national_transportation_statistics/html/table_02_17.html
I find amusement in the mental gymnastics some will go through to use the success of government automotive safety regulations as an argument against more government safety regulations.
There is such a notion as diminishing returns. It does not always follow that if a little is good, more must be better.
A little regulation for the general welfare might be okay (I concede that I would not buy a new car without seat belts, airbags, &c. – though lack of those features wouldn’t stop me from buying an older car).
On the other hand, if one could establish a causal relationship between govt. regulation and the trend toward declining road deaths, then that regulation had done its job. Satis. Enough. More regulation will not necessarily make a better situation.
Thinking constitutes amusing mental gymnastics? It is government regulations that are dropping our highway fatalities, government regulations like Dodd-Frank that are keeping more and more people out of work so they don’t need to and can’t afford to do much driving.
How much do you want to bet that “group of teenagers in a car” correlates highly with the driver being intoxicated, and “teenager in car with 35+ year old adult” does not?
A way to get at the problem would be punishing the passengers in the same way as the driver if the driver fails a field sobriety test. In other words. If you get in to a car where the driver is visibly drunk you loose your driving license/get a ticket/goes to jail. Then it would make no sense to go to a party and let the designated driver get pissed and it would put a hell of a lot op positive peer pressure on the driver.
Well there is that.
But there’s the whole three teenagers trying to look cool to each other thing. Each additional teen subtracts about 15 IQ points from the groups intelligence as far as I can tell.
I’m a newbie 31 year old mountain biker, and I can tell you I’m a lot less likely to get off my bike and walk a scarily technical part of the trail if someone is watching. Even a complete stranger.
Couple that psychological effect with bad cars and inexperienced drivers and that’s how kids end up getting killed by a tree.
Hell, when I was in high school I thought it was just normal to have at least one fatal car accident a year. Now that I think about it there were usually three or four kids in the car too.
I believe in Georgia you can now be 14 years old and drive a scooter on the roads.
Consider me a non-fan of graduated licenses for young people. Younger folks are already discriminated against far more than any other group in our society.
Heck, you can die in the name of your country in the United States. But still be too young to drink a beer? Sorry but that very reality epitomizes how truly screwed up and despondently hateful our society has become towards those under 21.
You want to restrict access to someone? Do it for criminals who haven’t fully served their punishment. Do it to the one who has actually committed the crime or the one who has disabilities that make them a potential danger to those on the road.
Driving is a privilege and not a right so I think crying discrimination is a bit of a stretch. It’s pretty empirically obvious that most young people are not mature enough to have earned that privilege. I would rather see some restrictions placed on older drivers as well such as increased testing for those over age 70. Statistically, older drivers are almost as dangerous as very young drivers.
Most criminals will just drive without a license anyway so applying restrictions to them doesn’t really have much effect.
You may say that driving is a privilege, but governments would be overthrown, states would secede, etc. if laws were passed that seriously restricted the ability of real Americans to drive wherever they want whenever they want. Just look at the level of civil disobedience the national 55 mph speed limit caused. Even my dad who always obeys authority and follows the rules drove 70 mph on rural interstates.
On the subject of extra restrictions on teenage drivers, how do you propose that police determine the age of the driver from a distance? Do Asian women get discriminated against for looking too young to use a cell phone? Instead, maybe we should just agree that people over the age of majority are adults and demand adult responsibility. 18 to 25 year olds are not kids.
I share your disdain at the irony that we can turn our young adults into cannon fodder before they can legally drink, but some of your argument does not necessarily follow:
Restrict access to those with disabilities that make them a potential danger to others on the road? I agree. But that describes teenagers very well. Their decision making abilities and thought processes haven’t fully matured yet because their brains are still developing from juvenile to adult. They’re hard-wired to be generally more impulsive and reckless than adults: http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2011/10/teenage-brains/dobbs-text.
I remember how I drove as a teenager. More limits would probably have been a good thing; looking back fifteen years later I realize how dangerous I was at the time.
“They’re hard-wired to be generally more impulsive and reckless than adults: http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2011/10/teenage-brains/dobbs-text.”
That is quite true.
I’ll put it you this way. In a perfect world we would have the means to restrict the high speed of cars to within 10 mph over the limit for those folks who are either new to the road or have some physical impairment.
Heck, I could even get on board with a program that would intentionally slow a car down if it was drifting past the double yellow or swerving.
But I do have issues with driving laws that target a broad number of people. The overwhelming majority of whom are fully able to drive responsibly. In a well functioning society, we shouldn’t restrict what people do through association.
Perhaps technology will help make the licensing process a bit more fair and reasonable. I have more faith in that than in laws that are usually designed to inhibit freedoms and raise tax revenues.
“But I do have issues with driving laws that target a broad number of people. The overwhelming majority of whom are fully able to drive responsibly. In a well functioning society, we shouldn’t restrict what people do through association.”
I’ll agree to that.
“You want to restrict access to someone? Do it for criminals who haven’t fully served their punishment.”
Most drivers who are involved in fatal accidents have no prior history of being involved in fatal accidents. What you’re suggesting isn’t particularly logical vis-a-vis driver licenses.
Graduated licensing has a demonstrable track record of reducing fatalities. Teen crashes are not linked to criminality, so criminality isn’t a relevant factor here.
Let’s take responsibility away from teens and then complain that gen y and the youth of today are irresponsible, that makes sense. Controlling a vehicle develops responsibility. When I was 16 I had already been operating bicycles, atvs and tractors for 10 years, Driving a car a car was no big deal. For too many kids driving a car is their first taste of that responsibility which is the problem.
You all are apparently too young to remember when there was a draft. At that time the drinking age was 18, for the very reason you mention: you’re old enough to die but too young to drink. But the drinking age went up when the draft went away.
As to more restrictions on young people? Well, the fact is that young people generally have far less judgement than their elders. (OK not all their elders). Did anyone see the NBC segment on “will my kids do something stupid”? They showed teenagers with cameras recording their driving behavior, and the kids knew the cameras were there. They all promised they would be good. They almost uniformly did their routine stupid acts, despite KNOWING they were being observed. Running stop signs. Hitting mailboxes. Texting while driving.
There was a fabulous article in National Geographic a few months back. It was about the recent studies of the human TEANAGE brain and its development.
It showed clearly that certain parts are simply NOT there until later into young adult years. Until that time, there is simply no way for a young human to understand risk taking and consequences for such. These parts are NOT there.
It was a wonderful reality. And this being “stupid” or blind on placing one’s self into harms way had a major benefit for the race itself. The inability to understand risks helped the human species to leave the nest at early years and run off into unexplored life and lands.
Yes, most did not make it and perished, but the expansion was there for those that did. This “group stupid” has a benefit….but just not for those destroyed by it.
Life is cruel. And Mother Nature real cares little about ht individual.
Regarding cars and motorcycles: I have always wondered if I am overly cautious when passing motorcycles. For instance if there is a motorcycle, and I need to pass, I will usually try and aim to get in front of the car in front of the motorcycle or, if there is no car, I will wait until I can see the bike in all three mirrors.
Combine youthful drivers with today’s cars that are more powerful and I wonder if the effects are exponentially amplified. (Yes, I acknowledge that today’s cars also have more safety features.)
Are similar stats for previous decades available?
This is why Pennsylvania now has regulations on how many young people can legally travel in a car with a young driver.
As the parent of three young drivers – and having poor judgment as a young driver myself – I think this is very wise legislation.