"Demographically, young drivers pose the highest risk on the road. Teens ages 16 to 19, accounting for only 3.6% of all licensed U.S. drivers, make up 9.1% of drivers in car crashes and 6.1% of drivers in fatal car crashes. Men are also at increased risk on the road, as they made up over 72% of America's car crash fatalities in 2022."Maybe it's time to take the car keys away from the young.Source: Car accidents statistics 2025 Consumer Affairs, 24 July 2024
16-24 --- 5,623Source: What age group has the most fatal crashes? (2025) AutoInsurance.org, 1 August 2025
25-34 --- 6,548
35-44 --- 5,117
45-54 --- 4,958
55-64 --- 5,347
65-74 --- 3,658
75+ ------ 3,556
First they came for the old ones, but I wasn’t old...
put miles driven un the equation. i’m 80...I drive 1000 miles a year.
Accidents per miles driven is the key metric. Over 75 is by far the most dangerous per that metric. Additionally, even a minor accident can severely injure an elderly person.
There are old drivers, and there are bold drivers. There are no old, bold drivers.
Good Information, Thanks!
Let’s expand upon this analysis. Raw data miss the full picture, and age categories need to be fixed across analyses.
First, the fatalities must be adjusted for the size of each group.
https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policyinformation/statistics/2023/dl20.cfm
25-34 year olds: 17.3% of total drivers, 18.8% of deaths per World Traveler’s data. Deaths/ drivers: 1.09x.
65+ drivers: 22.2% of drivers, 20.1% of deaths per World Traveler’s data. Deaths/drivers: 0.91x.
On this simple metric, old people look “safer.” They punch below their weight.
However, this skips other salient data like miles driven data, as well as sex of the driver, if they’re drunk, and city vs highway driving patterns.
To avoid this becoming a doctoral dissertation, I will only integrate miles driven by age (circa 2000, so caveat emptor). https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/ohim/onh00/bar8.htm
We see that 20-34 year olds’ average miles driven at 15,098 is about double that of the 65+ lot of 7,646.
If we apply the youths’ average to the number of drivers data (assuming the inclusion of 20-24 year olds and the differing time frames don’t cause too much bias), we find that 25-34 year olds drive 619 billion miles annually, about 1.5x more miles than the 65+ group at 404 billion miles.
However, the 25-34 year olds don’t have 1.5x more auto fatalities than the old folks. Indeed, the youngsters/oldsters deaths metric is 0.91x.
Put differently, 25-34 year olds die on the road for every 95 million miles they drive, versus every 55 million miles driven by 65+.
Adjusting for miles driven and number of drivers, older folks die more often on the road than youngsters.
Well, as a 92-year-old driver, I sure wish they would get all those 16-to-74-year-old "unsafe" drivers out of my way...
Been driving since the age of 10, got my first car at 11, and got my driver's license at 12...