Driving while distracted: inexperienced teen drivers too often take fatal risks.

• Author: Sundeen, Matt

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On a June night in 2007, a fiery head-on collision killed five young women in upstate New York. The victims, all of whom had graduated from high school five days earlier, died instantly when their sports utility vehicle swerved across a two-lane road into oncoming traffic and slammed into a tractor trailer. According to the police, a flurry of text messages and phone calls were sent on the 17-year-old driver's cell phone moments before the accident. This distraction, the driver's inexperience behind the wheel, the vehicle's high rate of speed and the time of day were all cited as likely factors in the crash.

Unfortunately, the tragedy in New York vividly demonstrated something that parents and traffic safety experts have known for years: Teens generally don't make good drivers. Inexperienced teen drivers are more easily distracted than others. Behind the wheel they are less likely to recognize and react quickly to dangerous driving conditions. New drivers, particularly young men, often show off and are prone to taking risks.

Although teens drive less than all but the oldest drivers, they account for a disproportionate number of fatal accidents. The crash rate per mile driven for 16- to 19-year-olds is four times higher than the rate for older drivers, and motor vehicle crashes are the leading cause of death among 13- to 19-year-olds in the United States.

TEEN LICENSING LAWS

For years, state lawmakers have attempted to improve teen driver safety through changes in licensing requirements, known as graduated driver licensing. These state laws most often include limits on nighttime driving and restrictions on the number of unrelated passengers allowed in the car. Although most traffic safety experts still believe these laws provide the best chance to improve safety, state lawmakers are now addressing a new phenomenon that perhaps affects teens more acutely than any other demographic: driver distraction.

"The combination of inexperience and distraction is highly dangerous in younger drivers," says Arizona Representative Steve Farley, who is sponsoring several bills this year that he hopes will curb teen driver distraction. "Distracted driving can be as impairing as drunk driving. It's been a big problem here and I knew that I had do something about it."

Experts estimate that as many as 80 percent of motor vehicle crashes and 65 percent of near crashes have driver inattention as a contributing cause. Each year in the United...