Deaths Due to Motor Vehicle Accidents

* 14% of all deaths due to motor vehicle accidents are teen drivers.

* Most teen driver deaths due to motor vehicle accidents occur on weekends 53% of the time.

* Teen drivers killed in motor vehicle accidents had a youth passenger in automobile 45% of the time. More facts below.

* Of teen drivers fatally injured in automobiles, more than 1/3 were speed related accidents.

* Teen lifestyle of staying up late make teen drivers a high risk to have an automobile accident due to drowsiness.

* More than any age group, teens are likely to be involved in a single vehicle crash.

* On the basis of current population trends, there will be 23% more 16-20- year-old drivers on the road in 2010 than there are today -- 26.1 million.

* This age group makes up 7% of licensed drivers, but suffers 14% of fatalities and 20% of all reported accidents.

* The 16-year-old population alone will increase from 3.5 million to over 4 million by 2010.

Statistics About Teens and Motor Vehicle Accidents

For children and adolescents between the ages of 5 and 14, unintentional injury-related deaths occur most often when riding in a car. In 1998 alone, 5,606 teenagers and 2,027 children died in motor vehicle crashes, according to the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). In addition, more than 274,000 children under the age of 14 were injured in car crashes that same year. Children and adolescents are most often injured, suffer more severe injuries, or die in motor vehicle crashes when they are not properly restrained.

16-year-olds get into accidents almost 10 times more often than drivers between the age of 30 and 59.

The risk for motor vehicle crashes is higher among 16- to 19-year-olds than among any other age group. In fact, per mile driven, teen drivers ages 16 to 19 are four times more likely than older drivers to crash (NHTSA 2002).