Jacksonville car accidents involving teenagers dying happen more often on July 4th than any other holiday. A study by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety showed more teenagers die on the July 4 holiday than on any other day of the year, Allstate spokeswoman Amy Moore said.
According to Allstate, vehicle crashes involving teen drivers increase during the summer, from Memorial Day to Labor Day. It is often called the 100 deadliest days for young drivers.
“Safety is important at any time in the year, but especially now when teens are out on the roads more frequently,” Moore said.
Marion County was also found to be at the center of the three most dangerous metropolitan areas for teen driving in the nation. An Allstate study last year concluded that the Tampa Bay, Orlando and Jacksonville areas ranked highest for teen driving deaths among the 50 largest metro areas in the country.
A similar Allstate study, looking at 361 metropolitan areas between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day, ranked Ocala as the 16th most dangerous city in the nation for teen driving.
These studies come together to show this weekend could be a deadly one for teen drivers here.
While it may seem surprising that the most dangerous spots for teen driving are concentrated in Florida, Moore says there are some explanations for the data. The lack of a public transportation system inherent to many other large cities forces teens to rely on cars to travel the long stretches of highway from city to city. Rural roads may also encourage faster driving, Moore said.
Driving distractions like eating on the go or finishing makeup in the car have now been replaced by texting and scanning the Web on mobile phones. Lt. Michael Thomas of the Florida Highway Patrol said people of all ages are becoming increasingly distracted behind the wheel.
Though FHP doesn’t correlate age with the prevalence of traffic accidents, the danger for teen drivers is still apparent.
“With age comes experience,” Thomas said. “When you take a young teen and shove a cell phone and some other passengers at them, that lack of experience and distraction will add to the possibility of a crash.”
An average of 5,000 teens die in vehicle wrecks each year, with another 300,000 injured. These are preventable deaths, Moore said, with driver error contributing to 77 percent of the fatalities.
Several programs dealing with teen driving safety are offered in the area as an effort to combat the statistics.
At high school presentations, Florida Highway Patrol members tell students about the grisly collisions they’ve seen firsthand. Mock DUIs put on by community traffic safety teams go through everything - from a collision and funeral to an arrest and prosecution - to show the dangers of impaired driving. The Law Offices of Henry E. Gareencourages all teenager drivers to put down that cell phone while driving.
I hope our Florida lawmakers follow in other state’s footsteps to stop
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