Wheels: Deaths of Teenage Drivers Spiked in First Half of 2012, Report Says

Jessica Kourkounis for The New York Times Megan Lavery, 17, driving in New Jersey in August 2012. The state has strict laws for teenage drivers.

Fatalities among teenage drivers rose sharply for the first six months of 2012, according to a new report.

The death toll for 16- and 17-year-old drivers of passenger vehicles jumped 19 percent, compared with the first half of 2011.

“It’s troubling” said Barbara L. Harsha, executive director the Governors Highway Safety Association, an organization representing state highway safety offices that released the study, “Teenage Driver Fatalities by State: 2012 Preliminary Data,” on Tuesday.

Based on initial data supplied by the 50 states and the District of Columbia for the first six months of 2012, 25 states reported increases, 17 showed a decrease, and eight states and the District of Columbia reported no change. Over all, 16- and 17-year-old driver deaths increased from 202 to 240.

“Even though the numbers are pretty small, 19 percent is pretty sizable,” Ms. Harsha said in a telephone interview. “We didn’t expect the increase to be as large as it is, so that’s a concern.”

She said the data did not include passengers, bicyclists or pedestrians. “We only looked at drivers, as that is the group most involved in fatal crashes,” Ms. Harsha said.

If the trend persisted in the second half of the year, it would be the second year of increased deaths for teenage drivers in this age group after eight consecutive years of decline. Final data is not available for 2012, but fatalities typically go up in the second half of the year, she said.

The spike in teenage driver deaths appears to have increased at an even greater rate than overall highway fatalities during this same period, Allan Williams, a road safety consultant who wrote the report, said in a telephone interview. He based the projections on data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the National Safety Council.

Despite these increases, the deaths of teenage drivers remain historically low and are still better than they were five or even 10 years ago, he said.

“But anytime there is a favorable trend and it reverses, there is concern and alarm. We don’t want that to continue to happen,” said Dr. Williams, who is the former chief scientist at the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, a nonprofit group financed by the insurance industry. “We don’t want that to continue to happen.”

While it is too soon to know for certain, he attributes the increase in fatalities, in part, to a rebounding economy. With lower gas prices during the study period and greater discretionary income, more teenagers may be on the roads, which increases their exposure to risk.

Another contributing factor may be that progress has slowed among states to strengthen graduated driver licensing laws. All 50 states have some form of the laws that were first introduced in the mid-1990s to gradually grant privileges to teenage drivers during higher-risk situations, like driving at night or with peer passengers. Distracted driving is also thought to play a role, Dr. Williams said.

But while studies and surveys indicate that laws are not particularly effective in changing cellphone use, graduated driver licensing laws have proven to help reducing crashes.

“The more comprehensive state laws are, the greater the effect,” he said.

Compliance is also essential, he said. “A lot, quite frankly, depends on parental involvement,” he said. “But many parents don’t even know what the laws are. They need to know what the laws are. They need to know what the rationales are.”

In addition to strengthening laws and creating programs and awareness to increase parental supervision, improving driver education programs is also critical to reverse the upward trend, said Ms. Harsha, the executive director. “It’s time to redouble our efforts.”

The full report, including state-by-state data, is available online at ghsa.org.