Teenage Drivers Often Make Same Judgment Errors

Worried by a deadly collision of trends involving teen drivers, a California campaign is under way to create a licensing scheme that would give teens here the keys to the road a step at a time.

And this year, for the first time in at least two decades, the California Department of Motor Vehicles has introduced a driving test to better reflect modern traffic conditions.

Almost since the invention of the automobile, car crashes have been the top killer of teens. While the number of deaths among teen drivers has dropped in the United States and California in the last decade, a dramatic turnaround may be at hand.

A rise in highway speed limits, a plunge in the number of high schools offering driver training courses over the last five years, and a 23 percent jump in the teen population by 2010 is prompting the new look at young drivers.

“We think the time is ripe,” said Don Patton, a spokesman for CSAA, which plans to seek the Legislature’s support for a restricted teen license. “There are going to be so many more teenage drivers in 10 to 15 years as a result of the baby boom echo.”

Authorities attribute the decline in accidents to a drop in the number of teens and campaigns against drinking and driving. Zero-tolerance laws - requiring immediate license revocations from teen drivers with alcohol in their blood - have also helped reduce crashes. California passed such a law in 1994.

New drivers have not developed more complex driving skills such as scanning their surroundings, anticipating what other drivers might do and maintaining a cushion around their vehicle, a skill some adults have yet to learn.

“That’s very difficult when you’re just learning to drive, because you’re just mastering the basic controls,” Patton said.

But more than that, there’s a dangerous mix of high-risk factors: Teens tend to drive faster, drive more at night, not wear seat belts, have more passengers in their vehicles, and be less able to handle the effects of alcohol.

Last year, 71 percent of teens who died in car crashes were not wearing seat belts, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

Seventy-six percent of drivers ages 15 to 20 who were involved in fatal crashes committed one or more errors, police reported. Cited most often was “failure to keep in proper lane or running off the road,” followed by “driving too fast,” according to the Traffic Safety Administration.

“It’s not so much that young drivers are more risk-taking than other drivers so much as they don’t recognize risk,” Patton said.

Drivers ages 15 to 20 are four times as likely to die on the road as those ages 25 to 65.

Although male drivers account for roughly three-quarters of teen traffic fatalities, the number of deaths is climbing far faster for girls than for boys.