Auto Accidents Biggest Killer Of Teens In USA

[Darth Wong]

Eighteen year olds aren't that much more mature than sixteen year olds in the "doing stupid shit" department.

They're somewhat more mature still. Even raising it to 18 like most normal countries have would get some positive effect. But by all means I support the raise to age 21-22.

No cars for stupid teen fucks.

And how do you propose 18-20 yr olds get to and from work without a public transportation system?

Demonstrate their problem-solving skills, like the young adults they claim to be.

[Sea Skimmer]

I guess we need more public transportation, don't we?

Yeah, don’t expect to get it easily or in less then twenty years of sustained expansion of the craptastic systems we have.

I dunno - take a cab? Walk or bike to work?

All very unrealistic for a large portion of the American population, such is the world we live in and you sure can’t blame people under 20 for making it that way. A lot of those states which allow 14 and 15 years olds to drive do it for one reason, a lot of population lives in the ass middle of noware and doesn’t like having to drive kids 25 miles to school each day. From what I hear the young drivers in those states tend to be safer too, because the vitaility of driving, and the fact that 911 doesn’t respond in five minutes are driven into them.

Me personally though, I know lots of youths are god-awful drivers, so are a lot of elderly though they tend only to kill themselves, but this is the country we have. On the average our roads are way safer then they used to be, and I just have a hard time caring that much when we allow so many people to kill themselves with cigarettes and let so many adults off with slaps on the wrist for a first and even second or third DUI because they got a good lawyer. I’m all for way harder tests and longer permit times, but big increases in the driving age are simply not realistic.

[Darth Wong]

All very unrealistic for a large portion of the American population, such is the world we live in and you sure can’t blame people under 20 for making it that way. A lot of those states which allow 14 and 15 years olds to drive do it for one reason, a lot of population lives in the ass middle of noware and doesn’t like having to drive kids 25 miles to school each day.

I've lived out in the country before. They have school buses for that.

From what I hear the young drivers in those states tend to be safer too, because the vitaility of driving, and the fact that 911 doesn’t respond in five minutes are driven into them.

According to http://www.central-insurance.com/docs/cmaaccid.htm rural areas are actually worse for car accidents, and I don't see why the young drivers would be the exception to the overall statistics.

Me personally though, I know lots of youths are god-awful drivers, so are a lot of elderly though they tend only to kill themselves, but this is the country we have. On the average our roads are way safer then they used to be, and I just have a hard time caring that much when we allow so many people to kill themselves with cigarettes and let so many adults off with slaps on the wrist for a first and even second or third DUI because they got a good lawyer. I’m all for way harder tests and longer permit times, but big increases in the driving age are simply not realistic.

Those other issues are problems too, and I'd like to see them addressed too.

[Sea Skimmer]

I've lived out in the country before. They have school buses for that.

No they sure as shit don’t in some big tracts of the US, school buses are impractical and far too expensive to operate in the required numbers. Hell, even some US cities don’t bus all the kids. I really don’t care were you might have lived, this is a fact and I have relatives in Iowa who lived it. You can get your license by age 14 and a half in that state BTW, I think if I ever drive across the country I’ll be avoiding the area.

According to http://www.central-insurance.com/docs/cmaaccid.htm rural areas are actually worse for car accidents, and I don't see why the young drivers would be the exception to the overall statistics.

I was talking about very specific examples, large scale statistics wouldn’t show it. Obviously rural roads, which are more poorly light, more poorly maintained, poorly policed and often just plain poorly designed because someone just paved over a wagon trail are going to be dangerous things in general.

[Darth Wong]

I've lived out in the country before. They have school buses for that.

No they sure as shit don’t in some big tracts of the US, school buses are impractical and far too expensive to operate in the required numbers. Hell, even some US cities don’t bus all the kids. I really don’t care were you might have lived, this is a fact and I have relatives in Iowa who lived it. You can get your license by age 14 and a half in that state BTW, I think if I ever drive across the country I’ll be avoiding the area.

So how do 6 year old kids go to school? Catapult?

According to http://www.central-insurance.com/docs/cmaaccid.htm rural areas are actually worse for car accidents, and I don't see why the young drivers would be the exception to the overall statistics.

I was talking about very specific examples, large scale statistics wouldn’t show it. Obviously rural roads, which are more poorly light, more poorly maintained, poorly policed and often just plain poorly designed because someone just paved over a wagon trail are going to be dangerous things in general.

I really don't see any reason to chalk up this phenomenon to physical road conditions rather than the drivers themselves.

[Spin Echo]

So how do 6 year old kids go to school? Catapult?

Where my husband comes from up north, the small communities can generally support elementary schools. However, for high schools which are more specialised, there aren't enough teenagers per community to make it possible. Their solution is that high school in those areas is a boarding school which feeds from several communities. It's simply not practical to have a school bus go around and pick up each of the students. I imagine that some places in the states, it's similar, except the high school students have to commute in themselves as opposed to live at the school.

[Sea Skimmer]

So how do 6 year old kids go to school? Catapult?

They get driven individually, by parents or by one of those 14 year old drivers whose a sibling, or sometimes in carpools with one 14 year old taking a couple friends along though IIRC they do have a restriction on the number of passenergs, unless the passengers are farm workers. Once more IIRC, Iowa and some other states actually lets kids drive without a license at all if its part of farm work. As I pointed out in my first post, the parents don’t like to have to engage in a long twice daily drive to school if they can avoid it, and since people vote and all, the law is the way it is and isn’t going to change. In say Rhode Island, an 20 driving age is more practical from a basic needs standpoint, but its still never going to happen.

[K. A. Pital]

Okay, how do 14-15 year-olds go to school? Are they driven there by parents too?

[LadyTevar]

Shit.

Female, 16yrs old. Had her driver's license for only a week. Witnesses say she burned rubber out of a WalMart parking lot in daddy's truck, didn't make the turn onto the bridge over the creek. Truck went over 12ft embankment into rain-swollen creek, 16yr old dies of truama before she could drown.

Shit... what a waste.

[CmdrWilkens]

Okay, how do 14-15 year-olds go to school? Are they driven there by parents too?

Yes or they are driven by friends/relatives who go to school and already have their license. In Maryland there was a huge rucus when the law was changed to allow only one teenage passenger with a teenage driver. The issue came from the Eastern Shore which is incredibly rural (its pure farmland and home to Purdue Chicken for the record). The complaint was that teen drivers over there routinely picked up three or four students from nearby houses to carpool them to school and limiting that teen driver to one passenger was going to make arrangements getting to school hellish.

[K. A. Pital]

That's fucked up. A raise would actually end such practices and force the US to re-think it's public school transport access. Which is a good thing.

So I'm still standing: not only this will fix the problem of teen idiots behind the wheel, but it would also stop several harmful practices.

[Thunderfire]

That's fucked up. A raise would actually end such practices and force the US to re-think it's public school transport access. Which is a good thing.

I agree. It shouldn't be that hard to get some (Mini)Vans driven by charity workers for this purpose.

[Darth Wong]

Okay, how do 14-15 year-olds go to school? Are they driven there by parents too?

Yes or they are driven by friends/relatives who go to school and already have their license. In Maryland there was a huge rucus when the law was changed to allow only one teenage passenger with a teenage driver. The issue came from the Eastern Shore which is incredibly rural (its pure farmland and home to Purdue Chicken for the record). The complaint was that teen drivers over there routinely picked up three or four students from nearby houses to carpool them to school and limiting that teen driver to one passenger was going to make arrangements getting to school hellish.

Cars full of multiple teenaged passengers and a teenaged driver are an accident waiting to happen.

[tim31]

In some Australian states provisional licence holders(read: first three years after you pass a practical test at minimum age 17) are not allowed more than one passenger under the uge of 18 and I believe there may even be a curfew in one states... Is this the case in North America at all?

[Kodiak]

In some Australian states provisional licence holders(read: first three years after you pass a practical test at minimum age 17) are not allowed more than one passenger under the uge of 18 and I believe there may even be a curfew in one states... Is this the case in North America at all?

Not even close. In California, I got my learner's permit at age 14. The restriction on a permit is/was that you had to have a PARENT (not just adult) in the car with you at all times. After I got my license on my 16th birthday there were ZERO restrictions other than what my parents enforced which were, no night driving for the first few months, no groups of rowdy teens etc. I think there should be a limit of 1 teen passenger for drivers under 18. it just makes good sense.

[Mayabird]

According to http://www.central-insurance.com/docs/cmaaccid.htm rural areas are actually worse for car accidents, and I don't see why the young drivers would be the exception to the overall statistics.

I was talking about very specific examples, large scale statistics wouldn’t show it. Obviously rural roads, which are more poorly light, more poorly maintained, poorly policed and often just plain poorly designed because someone just paved over a wagon trail are going to be dangerous things in general.

Yeah, these are anecdotes, but it's experience from growing up in rural areas.

Many roads are crappy, yes. The way sensible (not stupid) drivers deal with this is to drive slower and also more carefully. On some of those twisty, narrow, deer-infested back roads, I wouldn't drive over 35 even on the straight stretches and I wouldn't even turn on the radio. Meanwhile, the typical response of everybody else was to go screaming down these roads like they're major highways. Look, I don't care if you "know" the road well or there aren't any cops patrolling it. It's not safe. You could turn a corner at 55, and there's a deer, it goes through the windshield, and you're dead.

Except for those kids who actually were just driving on their own property as young'uns, this property being a large farm, and actually learned some respect for the vehicles because they were working (and I note there were not many of them), letting them drive younger only encouraged bad habits to form and had them treating cars like toys. Partly it could also be that parents that let their 13 year olds drive to town (this was not a rare occurence) probably aren't bastions of thought or reason either, but it's definitely easier to get away with that in rural towns than in cities. When your preacher's cousin is the sheriff's deputy, you can get him to ignore things. Small towns are corrupt as hell like that.

[Broomstick]

In some Australian states provisional licence holders(read: first three years after you pass a practical test at minimum age 17) are not allowed more than one passenger under the uge of 18 and I believe there may even be a curfew in one states... Is this the case in North America at all?

I don't know about Canada, but here in the US every state has its own laws.

According to my niece and nephews, they had restrictions on their licenses for the first several years they were driving (all of them got licenses at 16) limiting passengers, ages of passengers, hours able to drive... I don't know the details, just that things had changed considerably since I learned to drive.

For the record, two of the boys got their licenses in Michigan, as I did, and another niece and nephew got theirs in New York. I've heard them all comparing (and complaining) about restrictions I never had. The Michigan pair, however, stopped complaining after they and my sister were hit by a truck (my sister, their mother, was driving). No serious lasting harm, although they all spent a night in the hospital and the car was destroyed. One of them has given up driving (my sister is trying to get him past that - she wants him cautious, not phobic) while the other has gotten a HELL of a lot more careful and respectful of the road since then.

[Darth Servo]

All throughout my schooling, at least through high school, I either walked or rode my bicycle to school, so all the whiners can just STFU.

[Spin Echo]

All throughout my schooling, at least through high school, I either walked or rode my bicycle to school, so all the whiners can just STFU.

Out of curiousity, how far away was your school? Because I think your case isn't really comparable to some of these rural school where the kids are pretty far out, hence why they don't have school buses.

To be honest, I don't think it's these rural kids that are the issue. The OP specifically mentioned high-speed roads, and I don't think the roads the kids out in the boonies are driving to school count as such.

That's fucked up. A raise would actually end such practices and force the US to re-think it's public school transport access. Which is a good thing.

I'm not sure what better way of dealing with the really rural kids there is beyond boarding school. A bus route would take too long to be practical. Someone's got to drive these kids and in many cases it's not feasible for parents to do it. There's no real easy answer. I guess they could take a page from the Aussies and have a school of the air.

[Lord Poe]

If you're in the Southern California area, call this number:

1-800-COMMUTE

[Aaron]

In some Australian states provisional licence holders(read: first three years after you pass a practical test at minimum age 17) are not allowed more than one passenger under the uge of 18 and I believe there may even be a curfew in one states... Is this the case in North America at all?

Ontario and British Columbia have a graduated system. Drivers, regardless of age are required to drive with someone who has at least four years experiance for a year. Than you take a road test and get your full permit, I believe you can get a few months off the year if you take a provincially recognised driver training course but don't take that to the bank.

What the other provinces do, I have no idea.

[CmdrWilkens]

Cars full of multiple teenaged passengers and a teenaged driver are an accident waiting to happen.

They are I don;t deny it. The problem is that the system in place for getting kids where they need to be (and parents at the jobs they have to keep) is built around teens being able to drive each other to high school. I can say categorically that its a bad system the problem is that right now I'm fresh out of ideas for solving both problems at once without breaking the bank.

[Redleader34]

As a teenage driver, I know that I am not the best driver in the world. I refuse to drive over 45, and I only go that if I have to go on the highway. The graduated system is honestly safer. I was in a car with a 17 3/4ths ( If you pass the driving test and school, you get a full license at 17 1/2 years of age in NY), year old buddy, and a few friends. and I honestly thought "Damn am going to die in a wreck on the freeway with this guy at the wheel. I mean, he had skill, but he drove like it was a video game, and the fact that he had his dad's hand me down sports car (a 2005 BMW M5 from his dad) did not help things.

I don't see how people can not support graduated programs, as giving people 2000+ pound vehicles at a young age without some sort of training seems like a great way to "thin out the excess population"

[EmperorChrostas the Cruel]

Darth Servo fails at both geography and math.
Say you live 30 miles from your school. (Not unreasonable in rural areas.) If you think that is not likely, fail at geography. 30 miles is too far to fucking walk dumbshit, much less 60.
30 miles when riden on a bicycle at 15 mph is a 2 hour ride.

You seriously propose 4 hours of bicycle riding per day? Then there is WEATHER!
Think before you post. Tough guy with iron legs.