Saving You Money For Life

Most US states allow driving at age 16, 16 1/2, or somewhere in between. A new Insurance Institute for Highway Safety report focuses on the costs in terms of lives of allowing kids to get their license sooner than later.

The message is that licensing at later ages would substantially reduce crashes involving teen drivers. The same conclusion has been reached in other countries. Teens in Great Britain and most Australian states can’t get their licenses until they turn 17, for example.
The question that many people have is whether the risk associated with beginning drivers stems from their youth and immaturity or their inexperience behind the wheel. If it’s mainly immaturity, then it would pay to put raise the age of drivers. But if the problem is mostly inexperience, raising the driving age would simply put off the toll of beginners’ crashes. It’s hard to separate these two factors.
Canadian researchers tried to untangle the influence of age and experience on crashes involving beginners by dividing drivers 16, 17, and 18 years old according to whether they had been driving less than a year or more than a year. The main finding, reported in 1992, is that 16 year-olds, especially girls this age, had higher rates of injury crashes than older teenagers who also were new to the road.

A review of 11 studies published since 1990 also separates the relative contributions of driver age and inexperience to beginners’ crashes. The upshot of this Institute study is that new drivers who are 16 years old have higher crash rates than older teenagers who also are new drivers. For more information go to www.iihs.org

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