Ninety per cent of AA members underestimate the risk teenagers in cars face compared to higher-profile threats, such as drugs, drinking and gun and knife crime, research for the AA reveals. This is despite 80 per cent of accidental teenage deaths happening on the road.
Only one in ten of 18,500 respondents to the AA Populus of AA members survey see driving as the biggest source of danger for teenagers. However, while older respondents say drugs and drinking are the main threats, gun and knife crime is seen as the greatest menace by the younger generations themselves, Londoners and lower-income respondents.
Throughout this year, weekends with multiple stabbings have been matched almost victim for victim by car crashes that have killed teenagers elsewhere. The AA now fears that many of the tell-tale signs of an impending teenage road tragedy are being ignored because perilous driving is seen as less of a risk and doesn’t grab the attention as much as a stabbing. Drugs and drinking can also be more disruptive for family and friends than dangerous driving that can stay out of sight until it manifests itself as a crash with multiple fatalities.
This survey into the “greatest risk to the safety of teenagers” emphasises the need for parents and friends to keep an eye out for potentially dangerous circumstances. These may include:
- a car over-loaded with passengers,
- someone driving beyond the limit of their experience, such as a more powerful car, longer distance, a type of road or time of day that the driver is not used to,
- a driver whose personality or reputation indicates a worse than comfortable risk, although many other teenagers feel under pressure to show off by taking risks when driving.
Overall, the survey found the greatest risks to the safety of teenagers were seen to be: drugs 31%, drinking 25%, gun and knife crime 25%, driving 11%, smoking 4%, sex 1%, disease less than 1%, and other 2%.
Drugs were seen as the biggest threat in Northern Ireland (38%), Wales (37%), North West (35%), North East (35%), Yorkshire and Humberside (34%), Scotland (34%), East Midlands (33%), the South (31%), South West (31%), East Anglia (31%) and the West Midlands (30%). In London, 32% of drivers saw gun and knife crime the main threat, while drugs were seen as the second biggest risk (27%).
“It is easy to worry that teenagers may fall in with the drug or knife culture – they may or they may not. However, one thing is for certain: they will travel by car with friends of their own age, where just one moment’s bravado, foolishness or just plain bad luck can kill. In 2006, 29 children aged 13-15 died in collisions in which they were likely to have been driven by people of their parents’ age group. This compares with 286 teenagers aged 16-19 killed mostly while being driven by their mates,” says Edmund King, the AA’s president.
“This is not a matter of trying to outdo other dangers in terms of significance and importance, every teenage death is a tragic waste. The biggest killer of UK youngsters approaching adulthood is car crashes and the tell-tale signs of a tragedy in the making can be more obvious than other risks and therefore preventable by parents and friends.”
