A new study from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) shows that the proportion of U.S. teens killed in automobile accidents were driving older, smaller cars.
The study found that more than 25 percent of teen drivers killed in crashes between 2013-2017 were driving micro, mini or small cars. And nearly 67 percent were driving vehicles that were between 6 and 15 years old. Data from the 2017 National Household Travel Survey also found that teens log more than half of the miles they drive in cars more than 11 years old, compared with adults who log less than 30 percent of their miles in older cars.
“It’s understandable that parents don’t want to shell out big bucks for their teen’s first car, and they probably don’t realize how much safer a newer, larger vehicle is,” said IIHS Research Scientist Rebecca Weast, lead author of the paper. “Small vehicles don’t protect as well in a crash, and older vehicles are less likely to be equipped with essential safety equipment.”
Previous research has shown that teens drive less than older drivers, but they are four times as likely to crash compared to the number of miles they drive.
The study looked at how often teens are killed in fatal crashes and what kinds of vehicles they are driving at the time using information from the Fatality Analysis Reporting System from the Highway Loss Data Institute for 2013-2017. The study looked at fatal crashes for drivers between 15 and 17, and those for drivers between the ages of 35 and 50.
The study found that 28 percent of the teens were in a micro, mini, or small car, compared to 19 percent of adults. On average, the cars teens were killed in weighed 250 pounds less than the ones adults were driving. Less than 4 percent of the cars teens were driving were under three years old, compared to 9 percent of adults. In contrast, 38 percent of the teens were driving cars between 11 and 15 years old, compared to just 32 percent of adults.