Ahhh a long time has passed since I was a menace in my Buick Station Wagon, green with wood sides.

Well, seven years after I started driving, I still drive a SUV (not the same one from seven years ago), so I think the people who should really be afraid are the smart car owners. I'm not a fan of teenagers driving, regardless of their vehicle, so instead of villifying SUVs, make it harder for teens to pull the stupid antics that get them into crashes to begin with. Disable texting their phones when they turn on the engine, mark their miles, get them a GPS so they know where they're going (distraction breeds disaster). Above all, parents need to set strict rules with near zero-tolerance policy when it comes to driving with passengers and driving with friends who have been drinking.

Freshman year of college, I was the only one to have a special permit to park in a section that was usually off limits to freshman. That made me the go-to girl if someone needed to go to the store. They found out quickly, though, that my rules were dealbreakers for them. I didn't allow extra passengers in the trunk space (no seatbelts, lots of cops) and I didn't let the music get too loud.

I thought I was a dangerous teenage driver in my late model GMC Jimmy because I almost rolled it taking it around a median to do a U-ey on a boulevard. Turns out my [now-ex] bf's little brother hammered a nail into one of my tires and I didn't notice how flat it was. Pretty scary.

Let's switch the drinking age with the driving age!

It'll soften the blow when you tell Timmy he can't drive at age 16, but he's more than welcome to drown his sorrows in a beer down at the pub.

He'll just have to walk home.

Auto crashes are the #1 cause of death because not a lot of teens get heart disease or prostate cancer. I hate scary statistics.

I'm really not sure that freshly-minted, nervous teenage drivers care going to be any worse than distracted, oblivious soccer moms. Lord knows I've been on the scary end of more lousy driving from the latter than the former.

@lawnmowerdeth:

Exactly. You can contort statistics to mean whatever you want. 86% of people know this.

@zombies.like.lattés.too: Or ride his bike. Does that count as drunk driving?

@Thrashy supports the banned CSRs: And the worst part is those distracted, oblivious soccer moms are probaly the ones "teaching" their kids how to drive. You can hardly blame their child for being a terrible driver if they learned how to drive from a person that shows no regard for others on the road.

@lawnmowerdeth: So because it's teens killing each other off rather than diseases, that's ok?

I feel bad for these teens because of the outrageous of money you need to fuel these massive hunks of metal, not those who will be sharing the roads with them. I spent 3-4x as much money on gas when I drove a Ford Explorer than I do now in a small compact car. I still think most teens are much better drivers. I'm on the road a lot for work and I'd much rather see teen drivers than grandma who goes 35 in a 55 and doesn't use her turn signal. At least I know to expect aggressive driving from teens, once you get grey hairs behind the steering wheel the rules of the road get thrown out the window and everyone is on their own program.

@pecan 3.14159265: What a square! ;)

@cabjf: Yes.

@cabjf: in Ohio (where I live) you can absolutely be cited for drunk bicycling. In other states, depedning on whether bicycles are defined as "vehicles", the worst you would get hit with is probaly public intoxication.

As a teen who likes to think he has his head firmly mounted on his shoulders, I disagree with the idea that all teenagers are reckless drivers. Of course, I may be biased (I would already have my license were it not for some problems locating the items I absolutely need, argh), but I think that the solution to the problem is not to raise the driving age, but rather to raise the difficulty of the tests and examinations for getting a license.

Say, for the first week or two you have to ride with a camera installed in your car; then submit it for review - once it is reviewed, if you did well enough (It wouldn't check for nitpicky things like your music being one decibel too loud, but for instance, if you carried conversation too often, or used your cell phone - those are the sort of things this would check for), you get your license. Little things like this wouldn't inconvenience most people who deserve to drive, but they would weed out those who don't. Just my opinion, though. =D

@cabjf: No. But that's not what he's saying. The point is the number sounds higher than it is because their is a such a great juxtaposition in the disparity between the two numbers. No one is in favor of kids dying in auto accidents. But you have to keep things in perspective too.

Here's my idea. It goes along the lines of NASCAR. Instill a set of rules/guidelines for construction that ALL cars for teens/learning drivers must meet. Things included are auto On-Star(GPS, speed monitoring, passes through all cell traffic to eliminate phone use, yet still allows handsfree, monitor car usage to restrict at certain hours of night, i.e. if run or more than three minutes or moved more than a mile, alerts a number to say that whomever is driving might be breaking a law on a restricted license, but allows a kid to move a car to another side of the street,etc.), massively underpowered engine and transmission(built to last, but not haul ass), removable back seat(makes room for storage so kids can run errands, but limits passengers for safety and eliminate peer pressure, but can be re-installed when age/license allows passengers), roll cages, air bags, etc...

If you set forth a guideline, then ALL car companies can make a model that fits these parameters, yet allows there to be a diversity. All of these cars can be customizable as well, for things like stereos and tires. If all kids are driving them, then there's no reason to feel inferior. If you make the cars built to last, there will be a market when young drivers graduate to a "regular" car, and cars to fill it. There will also assuredly be a market for people who like small econmical cars like a SmartCar, so there will be demand outside the learning/young market.

Anything I missed?

@cabjf: He's saying that the number of teen deaths for causes other than driving have to be very low (not too many other options) so even if the number of car related teen deaths are very low (compared to older people) it could still easily qualify as the #1 killer of teens.
I hope that made sense.

@pecan 3.14159265: I'm not sure I agree on the GPS thing. Sometimes I think it's more distracting than just googling it ahead of time.

@tomok97: But unlike prostate cancer and heart disease, car accidents are preventable with proper education and parental intervention/supervision.

@BackOnTheAir_GitEmSteveDave:
That is ridiculous. I would never subject anyone to that sort of surveillance. There is this old school idea called trust that you should try once in awhile. GPS, speed monitoring, etc. why don't you just put your kids on a leash while you are at it? Ridiculous.

I haven't read the entire article, but how exactly is this any different than usual? Teens and new drivers have ALWAYS been high-risk drivers due to lack of experience. I fail to see how the SUV part factors in any more than it did 10-15 years ago when they were first being introduced en masse.

I also agree with people who have mentioned that the requirements for obtaining and maintaining a driver's license need to be much more stringent. There are far too many crappy drivers out there and I would gladly accept some inconveniences in order to raise the standards and enforcements.

@eccsame: And dying from prostate cancer and heart disease can be preventable with proper education and doctor intervention/supervision.

double that of 20- to 24-year-olds, three times that of 25- to 29-year-olds, and more than four times that of 30- to 69-year-olds

I like how the age range jumps from 4 years to 39. Way to protect the senior drivers who are just as bad if not worse than teen drivers.

I'd love to see the accident rate for 60-69 compared with 30-39.

@K-Bo: What's worse, though: looking at a piece of paper and reading instructions (cause who can remember to turn left, then another left, then a right after 2 miles, then a left and a u-turn at Pickadilly Street?) or letting a GPS tell you to make a left.

@BackOnTheAir_GitEmSteveDave: That is...scarily fascist to me.

When you change the linked article's "a great number of these clunker trade-ins" to "most" in this post, you wind up with a false statement. I'm pretty sure that numbers 1, 3, and 5 of the top five trade-in models are, in fact, heavy-duty pickups.

@Trexxen: I don't know about the camera idea so much (prohibitively high set-up costs), but I do like the idea of stricter tests. Also, in the same vein as the camera, maybe a gps/accelerometer setup in the front passenger seat for two weeks. If you go too fast on the wrong road, you lose your license.
Another idea is to have teens run an obstacle avoidance course while texting, or with a car full of chatty teens. They'd learn real quick (like I did) that distractions are not your friend. My rule when I was a younger driver was that yes, I could carry passengers, but there would not be constant conversation or music going on. Yes, I was the square, but the only accident I ever got into was someone else's fault, and it was their fault because they were distracted.

@eccsame: Actually that's not true. The only way to prevent car accidents is to outlaw and sieze all cars. "Proper education and parental intervention/supervision" can lesson the number of car accidents but they will never be prevented.

And, just for the record, you can lesson prostate cancer and heart disease through diet and excercise. But you will never completly eliminate it. Don't believe me? Just ask Jim Fixx...oh wait, you can't. :)

@OneTrickPony: Not to mention the fact that if they're actually trading with Cash for Clunkers, those cars are being euthanized and will not be put back on the road, for teenagers or anyone else.

@Trexxen: I'd say your head is in the right place, but you're going the wrong direction in terms of the execution. Look up the Finnish licensing exams sometime; the kids over there know their stuff by the time they're allowed to drive a car. Frankly, I don't think half the Americans on the road today could ever pass muster in Finland... and that would be a good thing.

@missdona: +1

I can't believe it took this long for someone to point this out! Bravo.

Actually since the Cash for Clunkers program takes cars OFF the road, AND these are the kind of cars teens would likely be driving (older trucks / SUVs) AND these vehicles are being replaced by smaller card with more modern safety features (airbags, traction control, ABS, etc.) ....Cash for Clunkers will likely result in a drop in automotive fatalities, teens and otherwise.

@BackOnTheAir_GitEmSteveDave: You're proposing a technical solution to a social problem, which works approximately never. :) The real answer here to come up with licensing requirements that aren't a joke, like I suggested in Trexxen's thread.

@pecan 3.14159265: Either is going to be based on the user using it right. I read 3 steps ahead on the paper at every stop light, and if that doesn't keep me ahead of where I need to be, I pull over to read. I always find myself looking at the gps though, and I've felt myself lift my foot off the break at a red light when it says to turn. I can imagine the instinct to do what it says without using your brain would be stronger in someone who has never driven without mom or dad being in the passenger seat telling them everything to do.

"One of the unmentioned benefits of Cash for Clunkers is that it may actually save lives."
Um, wow, that's some dang absurdly fuzzy math you're using.

@Trexxen: With the idea of the camera in the car for the first few weeks...wouldn't the new drivers know this and simply drive better than normal during that camera time?

@Thrashy supports the banned CSRs: And yet statistics prove otherwise, to the tune of billions of dollars for the insurance industry. I doubt they're giving those soccer moms such low rates if they're dangerous drivers. But maybe they're really just out to screw themselves out of some cash in the interest of, what, rebutting tired old stereotypes of women drivers that have been around since the 50s? That MUST be it!

@Thrashy supports the banned CSRs: That's a very good point; the exams there do seem to be what I was looking for in my "harder exams" point; and if they made those standard for America (or better yet, the world), then perhaps my second idea wouldn't be necessary. I agree with Farcedude that the setup would be expensive, but no price is too high to save a life - and besides, if the exams weren't so hideously easy, we wouldn't need to resort to such measures. (The GPS/Accelerometer idea is very good, by the way, and would likely work better - of course, they'd need some way to detect cell phone usage as well.)

@BackOnTheAir_GitEmSteveDave You missed the name for the government entity that would supervise all that. With all that I would suggest "The Ministry of Free Driving".

@cabjf: It actually does, as does skateboarding and farming equipment.

@pecan 3.14159265: Above all, parents need to set strict rules with near zero-tolerance policy when it comes to driving with passengers and driving with friends who have been drinking.

How about zero-tolerance? Because, you know, it's illegal.

I'm not sure I agree with the other items. Disabling texting is a poor solution. I haven't found a texting interlock device, but I have heard of systems that disable texting when the phone is traveling faster than, say, 10 mph. The problem is that it makes no distinction between whether or not the phone operator is driving. What if I want to tell my copilot "Here, send a text to pecan, letting her know we're going to be late?" Can't be done. What if I'm in someone else's car, not driving, and want to send a text? Can't be done.

When I was a teenager, it probably would have annoyed me if my parents tried to lock me out of something. It implies that they don't trust me to make the right decision.

@PingPongDarts: SUVs are substantially more dangerous to *other drivers* than other passenger vehicles. Up until now, they've been driven primarily by "soccer moms" who are statistically very safe drivers. Now they're entering the secondary market where they'll become favorites of teenagers and other high-risk driving groups.

So not only will you have the typical risk of teenagers on the road, but you will have teenagers driving cars that have the potential to do more damage to other drivers than ever before. It's possible teens will simply become uninsurable on SUVs because the premiums will be so expensive.

The danger of SUVs to other drivers has been statistically "hidden" due to their adoption primarily by the safest portions of the driving public. Now they're filtering into the most dangerous portions of the driving public, and we should expect an increase in the number of teenager-involving accidents that end badly for the other driver because they are now driving more dangerous vehicles.

@PingPongDarts: Incidentally, I first saw stories about this in insurance industry publications probably 6 or 7 years ago, anticipating the entry of SUVs into the secondary market where they would suddenly become massively more dangerous, and how insurers should prepare for insuring that market, and whether actuarial tables could adequately account for the danger they'd present and the cost to the insurers, etc.

@Michael Belisle: Well, I said near zero-tolerance meaning driving with passengers in that if parents tell their kids they're not allowed to have passengers, but there's an emergency, I can understand bending that rule. But driving with friends who have been drinking is definitely zero-tolerance.

Except that numbers 1, 3, and 5 are pickup trucks, not SUVs...unless the definition of SUV changed recently...

@mergatroy6: Or how about those older than 69?

My first car was a 1969 Cadillac Sedan De Ville. I got it when I was 15. I don't think anything on the list up there matches the destructive power of the land yachts that were hand-me-downs 15-20 years ago.

@pecan 3.14159265: You could also get them one of the 'black boxes' that monitors driving. I have mixed feelings about it, but I think a driver who's interested in feedback about their habits from an objective box could find it useful. I'm not sure if I'd go for the kind that can disable vehicle functions under certain circumstances, or the beeping kind (accelerate too fast, and it beeps. Go too fast for too long, and it beeps).

This is a fairly independent report on them (from an institute funded by insurance companies) (pdf):
[www.iihs.org]

@lawnmowerdeth: But what about the first part of the statistic? Assuming teens drive as frequently or less frequently than other age groups, why do they have more crashes?

I understand your point, and I think they should have left the 'cause of death' part out, but there is a reason to emphasize that teen driving is more deadly than it should be.