Yeah, who knows, really? The trope is that older drives are dangerous, but my take on that is that younger drives are just irritated with older drivers because they don’t tend to speed or tailgate or do other dangerous “time saving” behavior. In general, drivers are blatantly irrational. If we were rational there wouldn’t be 30,000 traffic deaths per year. It would be nice if people drove as safely and defensively as they would like their pilots to fly whenever they travel by air.
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Yup. Drive at a speed that will take 100% of your attention.
Of course, if you’re looking 12 seconds out, and paying attention to and anticipating things 3 seconds away, it might not be that fast.
Addendum: I always wanted a drivecam ™ camera, but it was only available for fleets or for teen parents. It looks like this is all footage from that company.
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Too bad that chart is totally uncorrected for the time/distance spent driving by drivers in those categories.
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How do you know that?
This is why walking on the side of a road terrifies me. Just look at all those innocent mile markers getting mowed down!
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I’ve always found it super weird that American 16-year-olds are considered children for most purposes (drinking, voting, etc) but ‘adult enough’ for driving. Maybe they should wait a little longer like everyone else?
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Long before cell phones were even part of the “distraction inventory”, I was one of those kids that severely crashed a car with a friend in the passenger seat distracting me. That’s all it took. I T-boned an old lady in a really large car. She was ok, but someone could’ve easily been hurt, crippled, or killed. Teens together in a car is an accident waiting to happen, largely because of their exceedingly poor skills at assessing risk.
BTW I don’t feel sorry for parents with teens who are now driving, I’m too busy watching out for them.
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Sorry, not accident, COLLISION.
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Unless this is weighted for the number of people in each group (which I doubt) its pretty much irrelevant to this discussion.
If there are X times as many teens as old people driving, doing Y times as many miles and likely doing so at riskier times of day (rush hour, late night, early morning) then it means they are significantly safer than the oldies.
( for the record, I’m currently in the safest age group, so I don’t have a horse in this race… )
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It’s not surprising given that driving is necessary in many areas of North America and cars are inexpensive and easy to acquire.
You can’t get from home to your friend’s house without driving. You can’t get to the grocery store without driving. You can’t get to work (suddenly important when you’re 16) without driving. You can’t get to the party with the cute girls (also important when you’re 16) without driving.
The countries out here are just so damn big that we didn’t think to build things close enough together for public transit to work unless you live in a multi-million-population city.
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So, just curious: how far can you get through the video before Schadenfreude gives way to the stark realization that you are surrounded by people this careless every time you’re in a car?
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Whatever age it is, it’s the first year or two of practice where all the accidents occur.
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Seems those noisy road strips would have saved virtually everyone in this video. A little warning that you are veering off the road.
A truly American solution to Americans who refuse to take responsibility for our own lives.
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I’m not sure if the chart is accurate or not, I didn’t post it.
Also, I think everyone should have to retake their test on a regular basis.
That be nice, but if that chart is accurate it would appear that doing so more frequently for those over 75 (and those under 25) could possibly be a better use of resources and save more lives.
Because it only claims to represent “percentage of fatal accidents by age,” and not “percentage of fatal accidents by age, per kilometer/hour driven.”
Fatality rates for drivers begin to climb after age 65, according to a recent study by Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh and the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety, based on data from 1999-2004. From ages 75 to 84, the rate of about three deaths per 100 million miles driven is equal to the death rate of teenage drivers. For drivers 85 and older, the fatality rate skyrockets to nearly four times higher than that for teens.
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All this nit-picking about how accurate this study is reminds me of #7.
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And yet friends of mine who live in the countryside in the UK (also miles from anywhere with no public transport) seem to have managed.
It’s just convenience of parents being more important than safety when we let 16 year olds drive.
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It clearly isn’t weighted, which means younger drivers are even less safe than it appears - the age brackets are for 10 year periods, except the youngest group. I.e. there are far fewer 16-19 year old drivers than there are 35-44 year old drivers, yet the younger drivers still have more fatal accidents.
The other factor to be considered is that many of the places teens “need” to go are far away simply because they can drive to them. No car, no convenient public transport? You’ll make friends within walking (or cycling) distance. Their houses, the get-togethers and the parties will by default tend to be closer by. Your part-time job will also be more likely to be nearby.
We tend to trade away the benefits of transport effectiveness by spreading our lives out. We don’t spend any less time travelling, and lose our souls in the process. Live locally, get to know your neighbours, walk, ride your bike, run, explore your local environs instead of simply driving past all this stuff.
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