Drivers of all ages admit to dangerous habits

When you consider age and dangerous driving habits, odds are your thoughts go in one direction: teenage drivers. They often get labeled as the most dangerous drivers. They’re considered reckless, impulsive and inexperienced. People often cringe when they have to drive near teens, just waiting for them to get older and theoretically become better drivers.

But do they?

On one hand, age does bring experience and maturity. There is no other way to obtain either one. Teenagers simply have to grow up and practice driving, and this can make them safer.

However, it’s problematic to assume that their age is the only issue here or that the problems are guaranteed to go away as they get older. The truth is that all drivers, of all ages, admit to a lot of dangerous habits. It doesn’t matter how old you are or how old another driver is. That potential for danger still exists.

The study

For instance, one study carried out in 2016 andreported on in 2017asked people if they had, in the 30 days before the survey, ever run a red light, texted behind the wheel or broken the speed limit. An affirmative response meant they had done one of these three dangerous activities — not necessarily all of them — that lead to accidents.

Shockingly, almost everyone in the study said that they did these things and exhibited these very dangerous driving habits. And this study only asked them about the last month of their lives. Presumably, this is how they drove all of the time. Here is the breakdown of the age groups and the percentage of people in each group who said that they had done one of those three things:

• 16 to 18 years old: 69.3%
• 19 to 24 years old: 88.4%
• 25 to 39 years old: 79%
• 40 to 59 years old: 75%
• 60 to 74 years old: 67.3%
• 75 years old and older: 69.1%

As you can see, someone who is 80 years old has nearly the exact same odds of engaging in dangerous driving behaviors as someone who is 18 years old. Perhaps teens do not deserve all of the dangerous reputation that they get?

In some senses, this survey makes you wonder if teens have lower odds of driving dangerously because they have recently been through training courses and they know what they’re supposed to do, whereas older drivers may feel complacent and may not have been through training in decades.

The risk

The real takeaway here, however, is that all drivers are dangerous. They all caused accidents every day. Those whosuffer catastrophic injuriesin those accidents must know what legal steps they can take in Louisiana to seek proper compensation.