Surviving driving: immaturity and inexperience add up to disaster for many teen drivers. Some 6,000 are killed each year and 300,000 injured. But state laws can reduce the risks.

• Author: Savage, Melissa

For teens, the license to drive is the key to freedom. The end of humiliating trips in the family van with mom or dad at the wheel. The end of waiting for a ride. The big step toward adulthood.

For parents, it's another kind of freedom. The end of carpooling and chauffeuring headaches. But it also is sleepless nights waiting for a young driver to come home.

Each year 6,000 don't, and their parents live their worst nightmare: receiving the dreaded phone call telling them that their child has been killed in a crash. For 300,000 more parents each year, it means learning that their young driver has been injured.

Teens are more likely to speed and tailgate and less likely to wear seat belts than older drivers. It's no wonder accident rates for this age group are high. The National Safety Council reports that 20 percent of 16-year-old drivers will be involved in a crash at some point during their first year of driving--the accident rate is the highest during the first month. And 16-year-old drivers are three times more likely to end up in a wreck than older teens.

The big step toward adulthood comes with tremendous responsibility--and the need to make mature choices.

But teens are often ill-equipped to make the split-second decisions that can keep them safe on the road. Inexperience and immaturity behind the wheel is the leading cause of death for teens.

Crashes not only cause serious physical and emotional pain, they are costly. In 2001, car wrecks involving teen drivers cost taxpayers $42.3 billion for emergency services, medical and rehabilitation costs, productivity losses and property damage, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

Once teens gain experience, they are safer and less likely to crash, studies show.

TIMES HAVE CHANGED

Until the mid-1990s, all it took for most teens to get their license was reaching their 16th birthday, a written exam and a road test. Teens were free to drive anywhere, any time with anyone. But times have changed. Now graduated driver's license laws appear to be saving young lives.

The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety recommends that states implement a learner's phase that begins at age 16, lasts at least six months and includes 30 to 50 hours of supervised driving. The group recommends an intermediate phase that lasts until age 18 and includes a restriction on driving after 9 or 10 p.m. and no teen passengers in the car. Full licensure would be granted at 18.

Graduated driver's...