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What Does This Study Mean For Parents Those Injured By A Teen In A Car Accident?

Decades ago, there was a huge push by safety advocates to encourage drivers to wear seat belts. Eventually, seat belt laws were enacted across the nation. A similar phenomenon occurred with drinking and driving, and awareness efforts continue even though all 50 states have banned driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs.

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Nowadays, the focus is on distracted driving - and legislators are once again taking action. Illinois has enacted a law against texting while driving for everyone; and has also banned handheld cell phone use among teenagers, school bus drivers, and everyone driving through a school zone or a construction zone. Most other states have passed similar measures into law.

But there's another type of driving distraction that is not getting very much publicity: passengers. And new research is indicating that passengers are more likely to distract teenaged drivers.

A pair of studies was published in January of 2012 in the Journal of Adolescent Health. One study reviewed over 670 instances where teens were involved in serious auto accidents. Researchers found that the teen drivers were more likely to become distracted just before crashes if they were transporting passengers who were close to them in age. In fact, of those teen drivers who said that they were distracted by something inside their vehicle before an accident, 47% of females said that the distraction came from their peer passengers. This percentage rose to 71% for male teen drivers, who were also twice as likely to drive aggressively and six times more likely to attempt an illegal maneuver when peer passengers were in the vehicle with them as opposed to when male teens were driving alone.

A second study focused on the traits of teens who tend to drive with multiple peer passengers. The research showed that these teens were self-proclaimed "thrill-seekers," underestimated driving risks, and felt that their parents weren't monitoring their driving habits or setting driving-related boundaries. Both of these studies were conducted by a partnership between State Farm Insurance and the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.


The results of these studies mean different things for different people.

• For teenaged drivers and their parents, it illustrates the need for rules which govern or restrict who can ride in the vehicle while a teenager is driving.
  
• For people who were injured in an auto accident caused by a teenaged driver, it means that the likelihood of the teen being distracted prior to the collision is sharply higher if the driver had members of his or her peer group in the vehicle at the time.
  
• That second point might be important if a plaintiff is trying to prove fault in a personal injury lawsuit.

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