Learning to cope with the demands and pressures of urban driving can be difficult for young drivers in California and around the country, and a study published on July 10 by the National Institutes of Health suggests that the first few months of unsupervised driving are especially dangerous. Researchers from the NIH and Virginia Tech University studied in-vehicle camera footage of 90 teen drivers and 131 parent supervisors, and they discovered that accident rates soared by approximately 800 percent during the first three months of unsupervised driving.
addition to dashboard cameras, the test vehicles were fitted with speed recorders and devices that monitored braking. After watching the footage and analyzing the data, the researchers noticed that teen drivers were often involved in collisions or near misses because they accelerated too quickly, braked too late and attempted turns and other maneuvers at dangerously high speeds. However, they also discovered that younger drivers were more cautious behind the wheel than their parents at night and in poor weather.
An earlier NIH report revealed that motor vehicle crashes are the leading cause of death for American teenagers. A representative of the federal public health watchdog said that the findings of studies could be used to support arguments for stricter graduated driver’s license schemes for young drivers. Teen driver deaths in Illinois have fallen by more than half since lawmakers in the state introduced such a program in 2008.
Experienced personal defense attorneys will generally pursue civil remedies on behalf of car accident victims by filing lawsuits against negligent motorists or their auto insurance companies, but they may also initiate litigation against parents when accidents have been caused by negligent teenagers. Attorneys could take this legal strategy when parents allowed teen drivers to get behind the wheel after consuming alcohol or taking drugs or in situations where conditions were such that an accident became a reasonably foreseeable outcome.