The National Safety Council focuses an entire week of its National Safety Month on the importance of Safe Teen Driving. According to the council, our teens are involved in at least 15 fatal traffic accidents each day. It’s not only our teen drivers that are affected by teen car accidents in New York, but also other motorists who may suffer serious consequences. Nearly 70 percent of people killed in these accidents that involve a teen driver are the motorists other than the teen. These others include the occupants of other vehicles, passengers of the teen drivers, motorcyclists, pedestrians and bicyclists, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
Our New York personal injury attorneys encourage you to help educate our young drivers in an effort to keep all motorists on our roadways safe. The best way to increase the safety of everyone is to provide our young, inexperienced drivers with adequate driving knowledge and practice to make them more comfortable and responsible on our roadways.
The United States reported more than 208 million licensed drivers in 2008. Drivers between the ages of 15 and 20 made up more than 6 percent of that total. This means there were more than 13 million teen drivers that were on our roadways that year. This was an increase of more than 5 percent from the number of teen drivers in 1999.
During 2009, more than 2,500 teen drivers were killed in motor-vehicle accidents in our country. There were an additional 196,000 teen drivers that were injured in these accidents during the year. It is important to remember that these statistics don’t even include the number of non-teen residents that were killed or injured in these accidents.
Throughout 2009, more than 5,000 teen drivers were involved in fatal accidents. These accidents accounted for 11 percent of all the drivers that were involved in fatal accidents for the year.
There are a number of ways that we can chip in to help ensure our young driver’s safety on our roadways:
-Make sure that your teen gets plenty of supervised driving. This will help to ensure that they’re practicing safe driving skills as they’re more likely to turn this driving practice into safe and effective driving habits.
-Try to expose your young driver to a number of varying driving conditions. While you may want to pull out your hair while riding with your teen through a summer downpour, it will help to ease your nerves when they hit the roadways alone in such conditions.
-Limit the number of passengers that your teen can drive with. Passengers are a distraction to teen drivers and increase the risks of them being involved in an accident.
-Be sure that your teen understands that there is to be no cell phone usage while behind the wheel of a motor-vehicle. Driving while using a cell phone gives a driver the same reaction time of a person who is driving while legally drunk.
-Try to limit the number of hours they drive in the evening. Help them to find another form of transportation if needed during the evening.
-Absolutely forbid drinking and driving. In 2009, nearly 25 percent of teen drivers that were involved in fatal crashes were reported to have been drinking.
-Try creating and agreeing to a parent-teen driving agreement to help set some ground driving rules between you and your young driver.
It is critical for us to help our young drivers and to teach them proper and safe driving habits to help reduce the risks of an accident for all motorists.
New York personal injury lawyer, Nicholas Rose understands that being involved in a distracted driving or other accident in New York City or the surrounding areas requires an experienced legal professional. If you have been injured, contact the Law Offices of Nicholas Rose for a free consultation to discuss your rights at 1-877-313-ROSE (7673).
More Blog Entries:
New York Car Accidents Place State in Top Ten for Most Costly State, New York Injury Lawyer Blog, May 19, 2011
New York teens drive safely in May to honor National Youth Traffic Safety Month, New York Injury Lawyer Blog, May 13, 2011
