The study also showed that teens who observe passenger restriction rules experience far fewer crashes than their counterparts who ignore such rules.
"Summer vacation for teens often means unstructured schedules, less guidance from mom and dad, and more exposure to crashes," said Brad Roeber, AAA Chicago regional president. "Enforcing safe driving rules that include passenger and nighttime limits is essential in keeping your teen and others safe on the road."
To reach its findings, AAA collected data from states where nighttime and passenger restrictions are in place for 16 year-old drivers, and compared those data with data from states that had no restrictions.
Factors that differentiated crash-free from crash-involved teen drivers included: 1) Compliance with state graduated driver licensing (GDL) laws, 2) Adherence to traffic laws and regulations, and 3) Parental involvement.
"Teens whose parents take an active role, obey traffic rules and regulations, and follow GDL requirements are much less likely to crash," Roeber said. "Just think how many lives we could save with the combination of the right laws and parental involvement."
The study found that compliance with passenger restrictions was especially problematic, and not surprisingly, teens involved in crashes were more likely than crash-free teens to report more frequent violations.
For example, 30 percent of crash-free teens, but only 16 percent of crash-involved teens, reported never violating their jurisdiction's passenger restriction during their first 6 months in the intermediate stage of GDL, and nearly half of crash-involved teens reported violating the passenger restriction "more than a few times."
Thirty-three percent of crash-involved teens reported having received a ticket, as compared to only 13 percent of crash-free teens. Also, teens who had not been involved in crashes reported higher levels of parental monitoring, relative to their counterparts who had been involved in crashes.
Motor vehicle crashes are the leading cause of death for teenagers, and government data show that per mile driven, 16-year-olds are involved in more than five times as many fatal crashes as adults in their thirties, forties or fifties.
According to the foundation, nearly half of 16- and 17- year-old drivers involved in fatal crashes were carrying at least one passenger under age 21 and no adult passengers. Over one-third of deaths of 16- and 17-year-old drivers occur between 9 p.m. and 6 a.m., despite the fact that there are fewer teens on the road during those hours.