TEENS, VEHICLE SIZE, AND HIGHWAY SAFETY.

A study by the Harborville Injury Prevention and Research Center, Seattle, Wash., found that parents do not consider vehicle size and weight as important as other features when choosing cars for their offspring to drive. Automatic transmission (66.8%), repair record (60.7%), antilock brakes (57.3%), age of vehicle (51.2%), low gas mileage (51.2%), and airbags (48%) were ranked as important or very important when deciding which of the existing family vehicles the teenagers would drive.

Less than half (40%) of the parents indicated that the size...