Selecting a car for teenage drivers is a modern rite of passage for many families, but sometimes little attention is paid to which types of vehicles are best for teenagers.
“It’s often overlooked, but it’s a huge factor,” said Allan F. Williams, a road safety consultant and former chief scientist at the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. Crash and injury risk, he said, are determined not only by the conditions under which teenagers drive but also by which vehicles they drive and how often they drive them.
Teenage drivers ages 16 to 19 are four times as likely to crash as older drivers, based on miles driven, and the risk is particularly high during the first year after getting a license, according to the Insurance Institute.
All states have some form of graduated driver licensing, through which they monitor conditions in which teenagers learn to drive. Dr. Williams said that after such rules were adopted, there was generally a drop of 20 to 30 percent in crashes involving 16-year-old drivers.
But the law does not guide the choice of vehicles. Parents and teenagers, he said, need to conduct some research.
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