The “100 Deadliest Days of Summer is generally mentioned as part of pushes by police and road safety groups to reduce the number of road traffic accidents over the summer period – specifically those involving teen drivers.
Statistics show that the roughly 100 days between Memorial Day and Labor Day see a rise in fatal crashes involving teen drivers. It’s not a mild rise, either, but a threefold one.
More time to drive
The primary reason fatalities involving teen drivers go up is that they have more time to drive and tend to take advantage of it. For most of the year, college has teens shut inside a classroom for most of the day, and busy with homework or sports practice at night and on the weekends. Come summer, when school stops, it frees up a lot of time for them to get out and do things either alone or with friends, and those things often involve driving.
Teens are more prone to crash at any time of year
Teens are three times more likely (per mile driven) to crash than older drivers whenever they get in the car, regardless of the time of year. So the risk is already there, it’s just that the opportunity to drive more means there are more miles driven for this age group.
The reason teens are higher risk drivers is that they lack experience. Like many things, they are learning by doing and will make mistakes along the way. Those affected by crashes involving teen drivers will need experienced car accident injury lawyers like the ones at Edwards & Kautz Law Firm