Portland Personal Injury Law Blog

With warm summer weather and no school you get bored teenagers filling the streets. A new study put together jointly by Liberty Mutual Insurance and Students Against Destructive Decisions (SADD) is enough to make parents and anyone sharing the roads with teenagers this summer a little bit nervous.

One of the more stunning revelations was that 68 percent of teen drivers admit to having a “near miss” car accident. More than half of them say that this has occurred more than once. When asked what they were doing at the time, the teens admitted to several distractive or bad behaviors:

• 30 percent say they were speeding

• 21 percent say they were texting

• 20 percent were talking to other people in the car

• 17 percent were changing music on their MP3 players

Part of being young is to be carefree and fearless. Unfortunately, that sometimes manifests itself in the inability to be aware of one's poor decision-making. For instance, 92 percent of the teens surveyed still believe that they were safe and cautious drivers, even after admitting to the poor decisions mentioned above.

Teens also often don't learn from their mistakes. While many say that they pay closer attention after a near miss accident, this behavior is only temporary. Only 13 percent of them said they reduced their speeding habits and only 26 percent said they texted less after a near miss accident.

Unfortunately it took being in an actual accident for a significant amount of teens to admit they changed their dangerous habits. Almost 70 percent of teens say they changed their driving habits after being in a car accident. Still, that number drops to 58 percent when asked if improvement would be “forever."

"The high prevalence of distracted and dangerous driving continues to be a concern, especially as we head into the summer months when the highest number of driving fatalities occurs," said SADD Chairman Stephen Wallace. "We know from past Liberty Mutual/SADD research that teens are behind the wheel 44 percent more hours each week in the summer (23.6 hours) than during the rest of the year (16.4 hours), adding some urgency for parents and teens to sit down and review their family rules of the road."

Adding fuel to the fire, summer months are when teens admit to more driving under the influence of drugs or alcohol. With the Fourth of July just around the corner,  we all need to exercise more caution when on the roads.

Every driver should get the maximum amount of insurance coverage they can afford. That’s because, frankly, you just can’t trust the people you share the road with will be covered. Second, you can’t control how other people drive, which happens to be pretty bad if you take into account a recent survey by Insurance.com.

According to the survey, many respondents admitted to bad driving habits and even driving without car insurance. Some people think this honesty is a good thing.

"If people admit to recognizing their bad behaviors, it’s the first step on the road to redemption," says Bob Passmore, spokesperson for the Property Casualty Insurers Association of America.

But of course there is the inescapable bad news it reveals the truth about how poorly people handle their driving responsibilities.

The online survey included a total of 1,496 drivers and what the results showed was not only disturbing but potentially lethal:

• Nearly one in 10 people admitted to having driven without car insurance
• Nine percent of the people who were surveyed admitted to texting while they were driving
• Thirty percent of the people say they talk on their cell phone when driving
• More than 39 percent said they eat or drink when they are driving
• Just a little less than three percent of the people surveyed said they read or groom themselves while they drive

So, no matter which dangerous behavior you choose is mentioned above, at least one in 10 admits to doing it. Some dangerous behavior is as high as one in three people.

While you want to be a defensive driver for your physical safety, you need to consider your fiscal safety as well. Think about it: one of every 10 cars that you pass or passes you today may not have car insurance. Couple that with those people who admitted to dangerous driving habits and it puts in plain terms how important it is for everyone to be fully covered in their insurance.

Citizens need to consider the benefits of full coverage under their insurance. There is coverage available that protects drivers from uninsured or underinsured drivers, which will compensate them for medical bills, lost wages and pain and suffering.

Every parent experiences trepidation over handing their teens the keys to their first car. Our protective instincts kick in as we worry about their safety. This isn’t just an unwarranted emotion, there’s good reason for the concern. A teen’s inexperience with driving and the accompanying fearlessness that is inherent with teens can be a deadly combination.

Teens are four times as likely as adults to be involved fatal car accidents. A recent joint study by The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and State Farm Insurance Companies examined the most common errors teen drivers make that lead to serious car accidents. The researchers analyzed a federal database of more than 800 crashes across the U.S. involving teen drivers. They then identified common critical errors and found that 75 percent of the crashes examined were caused by these errors.

There were three common errors that accounted for almost half of all serious crashes with teen drivers:

• Twenty-one percent of the accidents occurred due to a lack of “scanning” of one’s surroundings while driving to identify potential dangers

• Twenty-one percent occurred because the teen driver was going too fast for road conditions

Twenty-one percent occurred due to a distracted driver, either by something inside or outside of the vehicle.

As you might suspect, the last cause is probably largely due to things like talking on cell phones, texting, or changing music on the radio or on one’s MP3 device.

One of the things that the researchers made a point of was that the study dispelled the idea that the major cause of teen car accidents was reckless driving.

"This study helps dispel the myth that most teen crashes are due to aggressive driving or thrill-seeking,” said Allison Curry, PhD, lead author and a researcher at CHOP’s Center for Injury Research and Prevention (CIRP). “Promoting safe driving skills is as important as preventing problem behaviors."

The greatest good that can come from a study like this is to better inform parents and driving educators on how to best prepare teens on how to drive safely.

"This research gets us one step closer to understanding why teens crash and what we can do to help prevent future crashes," says Cindy Garretson, Director of Auto Technology Research. "Strong graduated driver licensing laws, along with educational programs that are focused on common teen driver errors, will help keep our roads safer for everyone."