The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has recently released the results of a study on night driving restrictions and drivers aged 16 or 17 years old involved in fatal nighttime crashes between 2009 and 2014.
Overwhelmingly fatal crashes happen during the nighttime hours and the risk is especially high for injury causing and fatal crashes when inexperienced and young drivers are behind the wheel.
Saving their lives and ours, as well as preventing severe injuries, demands that nighttime driving restrictions should start at 9 pm.
Research shows that night driving restrictions starting at 10:00 p.m. or earlier have been successful in reducing injury causing and fatal crashes in teen drivers. The study has also shown that NDRs that start at 12:00 a.m. are considerably less effective. Since most teen driving occurs before midnight, this ultra-late driving restriction doesn’t really impact the crashes that are happening in peak-teen-nighttime-driving hours.
- Between 2009 and 2014, 31 percent of fatal crashes involving drivers aged 16 or 17 happened at night.
- In 2009, drivers aged 16 or 17 years old took an estimated 3.4 billion trips.
- 93 percent of nighttime trips ended before 12:00 a.m.
Although only about 11 percent of teen driving trips are made during the nighttime hours (between 9:00 a.m. and 5:59 a.m.), about one-third of all fatal crashes involving teen drivers happen during that time frame.
About 93 percent of all nighttime trips made by teen drivers end before 12:00 a.m., which means that teen driving rules that don’t begin until 12:00 a.m. aren’t doing much to curb injury causing and fatal crashes that occur during peak nighttime teen driving hours.
Preventing injury causing and fatal accidents involving teen drivers at night starts with nighttime driving restrictions starting at 9 pm.
