National Teen Driver Safety Week to be held October 18-24

October 15, 2009

Teen passengers also urged to ‘Ride Like a Friend’

Traffic crashes kill more teenagers in America than any other single cause including drugs, suicide and violence, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).

To focus attention on this national tragedy and find ways to prevent needless deaths and injuries among young motorists, Congress has designated the third week of October as National Teen Driver Safety Week, which this year will run from Oct. 18 to 24.  In addition, Governor Jim Doyle has proclaimed the week of Oct. 18 to 24 as Teen Driver Safety Week In Wisconsin.

An array of data clearly shows the need to improve teen driver safety to prevent tragic traffic crashes.  “On average, a driver or passenger, age 19 or under, is killed or injured in a traffic crash every hour in Wisconsin,” says Dennis Hughes, chief of safety programs for the Wisconsin Department of Transportation Bureau of Transportation Safety. “Although teen drivers are only about 5 percent of licensed drivers in Wisconsin, they are more likely to be involved in a crash than any other age group. Teens are more likely to crash because they are less experienced drivers. They also tend to speed, drive aggressively, drive while distracted, and take other dangerous risks. Tragically, young people also are killed in traffic crashes at far higher rates than other age groups because they are the least likely to buckle up.”

Nationally, about half of the teens who die in crashes each year are passengers. A major focus of National Teen Driver Safety Week is to promote better decisions by teen passengers such as not riding with inexperienced drivers, refraining from distracting behavior and always wearing a safety belt.

Traffic safety officials stress that the risk of a crash increases significantly when teen drivers have multiple teen passengers in their vehicle. The risk of a fatal crash for a teen driver doubles with just one teen passenger and is four to five times higher with three or more teen passengers, according to Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, a sponsor of the Ride Like A Friend Campaign during National Teen Driver Safety Week.

“Inexperienced teen drivers can be easily distracted by teen passengers when they make a lot of noise, move around suddenly, or urge the driver to speed or drive recklessly,” Hughes says. “To help prevent these dangerous situations, Wisconsin has a graduated driver license requirement for new drivers under age 18 that helps them gain valuable experience behind the wheel while limiting the number of teen passengers in their vehicles.”

For more information on Wisconsin’s graduated driver license, visit the WisDOT Web site.

For more information, contact:
Dennis Hughes, WisDOT Bureau of Transportation Safety
(608) 267-9075, dennis.hughes@dot.wi.gov