In the past year, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS), the organization that calculates and distributes safety ratings for most new and used cars, has issued several bulletins about “the best cars for teen drivers.” Their most recent bulleting is copied below. It notes that most vehicles purchased for teens are used, and it makes some good points about features that parents should avoid when getting a car for a teen driver, such as high horsepower, and things that are a must, such as electronic stability control. So, bravo to IIHS for continuing to bring these do’s and don’ts to the attention of parents.
HOWEVER: unfortunately, continually missing from these updates is the reality that new teen drivers are not safe drivers, and for many teen drivers the SAFEST option may be no car at all. This advice has two key dimensions. The first, as readers of this blog have heard at nauseam, is that there is no such thing as a safe teen driver, due primarily to the delayed development of the human brain, which does not provide judgment and restraint from danger until we reach about age 22-25. So, it is misleading at best to point out these cars with the most safety features are the “best choice” for teen drivers, when teen drivers are inherently and unalterably unsafe. The second dimension is excellent research done several years ago by Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP), a leading national organization on teen driving, which has shown that teens who have “primary” access to a vehicle (they don’t share it with a parent or other family member) drive more miles and have higher crash rates. Thus, inconvenient though it may be, it is better for a teen driver in the first one to two years of having a license to be able only to drive a car that is also used by others in the family.
So, parents keep the safety ratings and features of used vehicles in mind, but don’t let them make you think that a car is any safer than its driver, and teen drivers are just not safe drivers.
Here is the IIHS link:
www.iihs.org/iihs/ratings/vehicles-for-teens
