Teenage Driving and Mortality

Motor vehicle accidents killed over 40,000 Americans in 2020 and are the leading cause of death for adults under the age of 25 (CDC 2020). Adolescent drivers who lack driving experience face especially high crash risk. All state governments heavily regulate teenage driving to protect the safety of young drivers and those around them. These regulations include a minimum legal driving age, zero-tolerance drunk driving laws, and driver’s education requirements.

While there is little doubt that driving increases mortality risk, estimating the magnitude of this causal effect is not straightforward. Comparing mortality rates of licensed drivers to non-licensed drivers is unlikely to yield causal estimates because a teenager’s decision to obtain a license is voluntary and probably correlated with other behaviors such as illegal drug consumption that also affect mortality risk.