Announcing Teen Driving Safety Week!

On March 21 Teen Driving Safety Week begins, declared by the Assembly of the State of California as an awareness of the dangers and responsibilities of driving.

According to the NHTSA (National Highway Transportation Safety Administration) there were 13.2 million young drivers between the ages of 15-20 years of age in 2008--a 4.8 percent increase from 12.6 million within the decade. Within this same timeframe there was a 27 percent decrease in fatal crashes and a 20 percent drop in  driver fatalities among this age group. Despite this encouraging news, motor vehicle crashes are still the leading cause of death for 15-20 year old people. In 2008 there were 5, 864 (12%) young driver involved fatal accidents; 2, 739 of those were killed and an additional 228,000 were injured.

Taking the most salient points from the NHTSA 2008 statistical data on young drivers, here are some sobering numbers to remind us of the preventive work that still needs to be done:

•  30% (291) did not have valid operators licenses and had previous license revocation and suspensions.
• 31% of young drivers killed had been drinking and had a Blood Alcohol Concentration (BAC) of .01 grams per deciliter or higher.
• 25% of young drivers killed had a BAC of .08 or higher--in other words, they were legally drunk!
• The severity of a crash increases with the amount of alcohol consumed. To wit: DUI crashes involving only property damage were 2%; DUI crashes resulting in injury leapt to 4%; DUI crashes ending in fatalities jumped exponentially to 22%!
• Alcohol involvement is higher among male young drivers than female; 26% of male drivers involved in a fatal crash had been drinking just before the accident, compared to 13% of young female drivers who were under the influence at the time of the accident.
• 63% of young drivers who had been drinking and were involved in fatal crashes were unrestrained.  73% of those drivers who were not wearing seat belts were killed on impact.
• In California there were 593 young driver fatalities for 2008.

Unfortunately, these statistics do not mention any fatalities involving texting while driving, an increasing concern. Two studies by the University of Utah in 2003 and 2006 respectively, comparing the effects of drunk driving versus texting and driving, showed that on the whole, texting while driving had the same effect on driving ability as being behind the wheel with a .08 BAC. What's more, it showed that a hands free device was not any safer than a hand held one. The conclusion is, anytime you take your eyes and mind away from the task of driving, you are inevitably putting yourself and others in much greater danger.

Keeping this in mind, the next time you're behind the wheel, ask yourself if it's worth getting in an accident and you and/or someone else gets hurt or killed while you answer the message on your phone? Is any message/call really that urgent, that it couldn't wait? Isn't it worth waiting a few seconds until you're safely off the road before you answer the phone or text message? Think about it...what if the last call/message you answered while driving...

                                                                    ...was your last?

For more information about Alliance Defensive Driving School, please go to: http://www.thedriverguy.com/index.html

For more information about our Teen Program, please go to: http://www.thedriverguy.com/teens.html

For more information about our prices and online Drivers Ed Program, please go to: http://www.thedriverguy.com/online_driversed.html



Car accident photograph from: www.fugly.com
Casket photograph from: www.scrapetv.com