Per mile driven, teen drivers are more likely to be involved in a fatal crash than other drivers. The increased risk for crashing results from a combination of inexperience and immaturity, particularly a tendency toward risky behavior. As a parent, you are a role model for your teenage driver. Practice safe driving yourself, and require seat belt use at all times in the car.

Based on the latest injury prevention research, emergency physicians offer the following advice to parents on how to decrease their teen’s risk of a fatal crash.

• Limit the number of passengers. Teenage passengers significantly increase the risk of a fatal crash for 16- and 17-year-old drivers, and the risk increases with the number of passengers. In fact, the majority of deaths that occur in crashes involving young drivers are to other people, particularly the passengers. Parents of teenagers may want to limit their child’s exposure to teenage drivers, even if it means driving their child themselves.
• Limit night-time driving. Setting a 9:00 p.m. driving restriction for novice drivers could save their lives. In 2003, 32 percent of the crashes that killed 16- and 17-year-old drivers occurred between 9:00 p.m. and 5:00 a.m.
• Choose a safe vehicle. Traffic safety experts believe that some vehicles are riskier for teen drivers. Sports cars, for instance, can incite novice drivers to dangerous behavior, placing them and their passengers in jeopardy. Older vehicles may lack safety features of newer models, increasing occupants’ risk of serious injury in a crash. The higher center of gravity in light trucks, including pickups and Sport Utility Vehicles may combine with novice mistakes and lead to an increased risk of rolling over. A sedan or the family station wagon — the vehicles considered least “cool” to most teenagers — are exactly what the novice driver is safest driving. 
• Buckle up. Parents and peers of teen drivers can have a major influence over seat belt use. This is important because of the teens killed as occupants in motor vehicles in 2003, only about one-third (37 percent of drivers and 25 percent of passengers) were wearing seat belts at the time of the crash. One of the biggest factors affecting whether teenage drivers and passengers involved in fatal crashes were wearing seat belts was whether or not the state where they were driving had a primary seat belt law — one that allows a police officer to pull the vehicle over for having occupants who are unbelted.
• Have zero tolerance for alcohol use. Alcohol use increases the crash risk for all drivers. However, alcohol’s contribution to heightened crash risk for drivers under 21 is markedly greater at lower blood alcohol concentrations, and increases more sharply at all levels of alcohol use. For this reason, all states and territories in the U.S. have zero tolerance legislation, which means the legal limit of alcohol in a driver under 21 is zero (or 0.02, the limit of the test). However, relatively few teens know this (ranging from 32 percent to 71 percent). In order for this legislation to be an effective deterrent, teen drivers need to know they would likely suffer license revocation for having any alcohol in their system while driving. Parents can play an important role in educating teens about this law.

Teen drivers are novices and need the opportunity to improve their skills in low-risk situations. At a minimum, this means limiting teen passengers and night-time driving for the first year, ensuring that the driver and all passengers are safely belted 100 percent of the time, driving the safest vehicle available, and committing to zero tolerance for alcohol in underage drivers.