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Are you in the market for an economically advantageous car for your teenager to kick around town in? Are you thinking a smaller, older car might be just the ticket? You might want to rethink that after a study found that more teenagers die in older cars, especially those smaller in size. It would stand to reason that such cars would be the least likely to excel in crashes given the older protective technologies, or lack thereof, and smaller area of the vehicle. In fact, researchers found that four out of five teens killed over a five year span were driving cars at least six years old; that nearly half of teens killed in the same five year span were driving cars that were at least eleven years old; and that a third of these teens were driving small or mini cars.

Teenagers are at a higher risk than more experienced, older drivers of being in a fatal collision. They tend to have that invincible attitude young people often have so they are not as careful, may engage in riskier driving, and may not pay attention to laws telling them not to engage in distracted driving or to wear their seat belts at all times. This carefree attitude, coupled with the lack of experience of the teen driver, can cause deadly accidents in a car unable to protect as well as larger, newer models with more safety features.

Often parents do not have the luxury of purchasing newer larger vehicle models for extra drivers in the family, often teenagers. Fortunately, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety has come out with a guide for parents concerned with safety and budgets when buying cars for their precious teenagers’ use. If you or someone you know has already become the victim of a crash, do not hesitate to contact Inserra & Kelley for expert, caring assistance in an unfortunate, unwanted accident.

3 Comments

  1. Gravatar for Harvey McFadden
    Harvey McFadden

    It is small cars with bad weight ratios that have all the fatalities. Small cars with good weight ratios can have fewer accidents than larger cars

    During adverse conditions it will often be noticed that it is the rear of a vehicle that loses traction first.

    What the average person and some experts are not aware of is that there can be as high as 950 pounds or more weight on the front axle of their vehicle than the back. So a car that feels like a limousine on the front holds like a golf cart on the back

    Generally vehicles with equal weight front and rear have a fatality occurrence of 50 per million registered. This can be attributed to human error.

    Consistently vehicles with more than 63 percent weight on the front will have 3 times as many accidents. The difference in weight makes predicting a safe speed harder and recovery from a breakaway of the lighter rear almost impossible.

    The fuel tank holds one percent of the vehicle weight so a car with a weight ratio of 63/37 with an empty tank now becomes 64/36 , very unsafe !

    See lossofcontrolaccidents at blogspot.com/

  2. Gravatar for Harvey McFadden
    Harvey McFadden

    Read An Analysis of Traffic Deaths by Vehicle Type and Model available from ACEEE

    Page 4 a VW Jetta at 60/40 weight ratio has 50% less fatalities than a Grand Am at 65/35 and in that year had less fatalities than a Cadillac at 66/34

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