Burns Collision Center

The Best and Worst States for Teenager Drivers

If you have a teenage driver (or more) in your family, you’re obviously already concerned about their safety on the road. At Burns Collision Center, we know that car crashes are the number one killer of teens in the U.S. and every year 5,000 teenagers die on America’s roadways. It’s a national tragedy, because these deaths do not need to happen.

Shocking statistics, revealed in a report published in Reader's Digest highlight the risks that teen drivers pose to themselves and others and the desperate need for states to pass stricter laws regulating teen drivers. As the report shows, more stringent laws usually result in fewer fatalities.

In the report, the top five states for teen drivers are New York, Oregon, Massachusetts, Hawaii and Delaware.

In contrast, if you’re a teenage driver in South Dakota, Montana, North Dakota, Wyoming and Missouri, well—be especially careful, because these are the bottom five on the list of the best and worst states for teenagers to drive in, based on the highest or lowest number of driving fatalities per 100,000 teens in each state.

Reader's Digest ranked all 50 states based on their laws in three areas:

• Graduated driver licensing, which imposes certain restrictions on teens before they are fully licensed
• Seat belt use
• DUI (Driving Under the Influence).  

As the report shows, a number of factors contribute to teen accidents, including:

• Speeding is a factor in 35% of crashes involving young drivers
• Cell phone use increases the crash risk by 300%
• Adding one passenger to a teen-driven car increases the fatal crash risk by 48%; adding a second increases it by 158%
• 87% of teen deaths involve distracted drivers; radios rank as a top distraction
• During nighttime, teens drivers are three times more likely to die in crash than during the day

As a parent, the next logical question is what can you do to cut down on teenage fatalities in your state? Well, the first thing would do is talk to your children’s school and encourage them to do more safety/traffic car education. Increase behind-the-wheel training and work with other parents to come up with rules and guidelines for these young drivers. And also reach out to your local government representatives to pass laws to protect and regulate teenage drivers. If we can all do a little in this regard, we can cut down teenage driving fatalities and make the roads safer for all of us! 

Sources: Readers Digest, NHTSA and Wikipedia