The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Young and behind the wheel
Teen drivers still most in danger of crashing
When a deadly collision took the lives of two teenagers in Stamford on Monday, it reaffirmed a distressing tendency involving young drivers.
While the rate of driving fatalities involving young drivers has dropped significantly over the last 40 years, teenage motorists are still the most likely to cause fatal accidents of any age group.
Across the country, drivers who are 16 to 19 years old are nearly three times more likely to be in a fatal crash than drivers aged 20 and up, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. Those at greatest risk are 16 and 17 years old. In 2016, six teens aged 16 to 19 died every day due to motor vehicle crashes, according to the Centers for Disease Control.
There were five passengers 19 and younger in the car that crashed on Canal Street in Stamford on Aug. 26, including the driver, Jerry Diaz, who was 18. A sixth passenger was 20.
KyMani AntoinePollack, 19, was pronounced dead at the scene. Nishawn Tolliver, 18, was transported to the hospital and later pronounced dead. Both were from Stamford.
Not only do young people have less experience with driving, experts said,
they also tend to have a sense of complacency about risk, which makes them more open to taking chances behind the wheel. Police have said excessive speed was a cause of the fatal Stamford collision. They have not said whether other factors were involved.
“Because they’re young, and their brains are still developing, the ability to identify risk is not fully developed. As you get older, you have a little more wisdom,” said Fran Mayko, a public affairs representative for the American Automobile Association.
The crash in Stamford also ticked off a number of other boxes that transportation and driving spe
cialists say are common factors in deadly accidents, including that it occurred in the early morning hours and during summer.
Most fatal accidents involving young drivers take place in the summer.
“We call the period between Memorial Day and Labor Day the ‘100 Deadliest Days,’” said Mayko.
The automobile association has a number of safety recommendations that parents and other caregivers can use to make driving as safe as possible for new motorists.
“Teach the kids to become responsible and safe drivers. Parents should draft driving agreements, we want them to take the rite of passage seriously, and to set consistent rules, and enforce them,” said Mayko.
An agreement could set restrictions on cell phone use and passengers, prohibit alcohol use and require mandatory checkin times, among other prac
tices.
Overall, the rate of teen fatalities has been in decline across the country, and around the region, for decades. The year 1978 saw the highest number of automobile fatalities involving teenagers 13 to 19, when 9,940 deaths were reported. The number of deaths in that category in 2017 was 2,734, according to statistics maintained by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.
Marisa Auguste, an analyst at the Connecticut Transportation Safety Research Center, said fatalities among young drivers in the state, as elsewhere, had been trending down, thanks to safer cars and other initiatives to improve safety on the road.
“All categories (of fatal collisions) have been in decline for the last year or two. It’s due to a good trafficsafety effort,” she said.
But even if progress has been made, many young people have died in recent
years on roadways in the state. The research center compiles a database of accident information, showing that 147 young drivers, aged 18 to 25, have died on state roads from 2015 to the present.
Tom Ferraro, a driving instructor who works with young drivers in Greenwich, Stamford and around the region, said his heart sank when he heard about the double fatality in Stamford. Spending time with beginning drivers, he said, has made him especially concerned about young people, inexperience and bad decisions.
He would like to see more training required of young drivers, he said, since the process to achieve proficiency behind the wheel takes time. The state now requires a total of 30 hours classroom training, including an eighthour safe driving course, and two of hours of training with a parent or legal guardian, in order for a learner’s permit holder to get a license. Forty hours of practice driving are also required.
Even those measures, Ferraro said, give new drivers little sense of the challenges and dangers that automobiles possess. The power and efficiency of modern cars — such as the Nissan Altima sedan like the one involved in the Stamford crash — can be deceptive to inexperienced drivers.
“These cars run so quick, young drivers don’t realize how fast they’re going,” he said.
The driving instructor said young people can often be particularly naive about cars and the dangers they pose.
“There are kids who think they have power over the car — and that can hurt you,” said Ferraro. “They have to realize these machines can hurt a lot of people.”