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Old Cars Putting Teen Drivers at Higher Death Risk, Study Says

So your son/daughter just passed the driver exam and it’s time for a first car. Better choose carefully, because the older it is, the higher the injury rate gets for the beginner motorist.
Ford Pinto 1 photo
Photo: wikimedia/edited by autoevolution
At least that’s what a new Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) study says. According to them, most US teens killed in car crashes were driving old vehicles that were lacking the modern safety technology required to meet current standards.

The mentality goes like this: kid gets driver’s license and parent buy an old first car that he/she can abuse to hone their skills. This could be a dangerous thinking in some cases and it turns out to expose teen drivers to three times the risk of dying in a car crash than adults over 20.

In the numbers

The study is based on data gathered by the government’s Fatal Accident Reporting System (FARS). IIHS compared the types of cars driven by teens who unfortunately died in crashes between 2008 and 2012 with those driven by adults.

Results showed that 49% of teens that lost their lives were driving cars more than 11 years old, without electronic stability control (ESC) systems or modern retention systems, not to mention impact absorbing structures.

More data shows that in most cases, the teens were driving smaller cars than middle-aged drivers, which is an important factor in a crash related to absorbing impacts and keeping the occupants safe.

So yeah, you should pay attention to what kind of driver you sibling is and get them a safe car to start with, especially if they’re clumsy or loose focus on the traffic. Case in which we wouldn’t buy them a car at all, but then it’s your decision...
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