It’s official: teenagers are sucky drivers.

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“Accidents involving teen drivers cost more than $34 billion in ’06.”

Full article…

By Doug Newcomb:
Ask any parent who has just added a kid to the family’s insurance policy and they’ll tell you how expensive it is to have a teen behind the wheel. But the overall cost of teen driving is as tragic as it is staggering . According to a recent report from AAA, car accidents involving drivers 15 to 17 cost society more than $34 billion in medical expenses, property damage and related costs in 2006.

This massive figure includes $9.8 billion related to fatal crashes , and double that amount ($20.5 billion), connected with non-fatal crashes, while property damage losses made up the remaining $4.1 billion. But there are, of course, more heartbreaking and incalculable losses behind with these numbers.

More facts from the same article:

-According for The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), motor vehicle crashes are the leading cause of death among U.S. teens , accounting for 36 percent of all deaths in the age group.
-The risk of motor vehicle crashes is higher among 16- to 19-year-olds than among any other age group, and per-miles-driven teens ages 16 to 19 are four times more likely than older drivers to crash, says the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS).
—IIHS statistics show that 16- and 17-year-old driver death rates increase with each additional passenger.
-According to teensafety.com, 1 in 3 teenage drivers has an accident in the first year of receiving a license, and a teenager is injured in a car crash every 55 seconds and killed every 6.5 minutes.

QUESTION: What is the solution? More practice time? Should teens have to wait longer to get their licenses? Or do you feel these reports are inaccurate?