Articles Tagged with teen drivers

When teenagers begin driving in Escondido, the experience can be extremely stressful for parents—both as passengers in the front seat and as nervous figures waiting at home for a teenager to return safely with the car. According to an article in Forbes, parent anxiety might not be helping teenagers at all when it comes to reducing the rate of car accidents. Rather than feeling nervous about having your teen behind the wheel, it is better to take steps to combat your anxieties surrounding your child obtaining a driver’s license and to focus on rational tasks that can provide your teen driver with the safety training they need to stay safe on the road.

Teen Driving is Dangerous

Parents’ anxieties surrounding teen driving are not unfounded. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that, on average, six teenagers between the ages of 16 and 19 die every day in a motor vehicle collision, and as many as 300,000 teens require treatment in emergency departments every year for car accident injuries. Yet, as the CDC underscores and the Forbes article emphasizes, teen driving collisions are preventable.

file0001569965691According to a recent report from NPR, car accidents are the leading cause of death for American teenagers, and in a surprisingly high number of those crashes, alcohol plays a role. About 25% of all teenage traffic collisions involve alcohol. In states where there are substantial restrictions on alcohol usage and serious repercussions for impaired driving, the rate of teenage auto accident fatalities tends to be lower, according to a recent study reported by NPR. What do the findings of this new study tell us? California and states across the country should put policies into place that help to curb teens’ purchase and use of alcohol, and to take steps to make the consequences of drinking and driving more severe.

Regulations on Alcohol Sales for the General Population


When we talk about regulations aimed at limiting the purchase of alcohol and its consumption by underage teen drivers, what kinds of regulations are we thinking about in practice? According to the NPR report, there are a number of regulations that can accomplish these goals with relative ease, and all of them target the general population. In other words, policies aimed strictly at teens do not tend to have the results we want. Rather, it is important to consider regulations that would limit alcohol purchases for everyone, including San Diego residents who can legally purchase it. Examples of these policies include but are not limited to:

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