Drivers Ages 19-24 Are Worst-Behaved, But Not Because They’re Millennials

With U.S. traffic deaths on the rise, many industry experts are looking for ways to make roads safer places. As a result, we now know which group of drivers are statistically the worst-behaved.

AAA revealed Wednesday that 88 percent of young millennials admit to texting and driving, running red lights and/or speeding. That’s roughly 9 percent higher than any other age group AAA surveyed for its annual Traffic Safety Culture Index.

“Alarmingly, some of the drivers ages 19 to 24 believe that their dangerous driving behavior is acceptable,” Dr. David Yang, executive director of AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety, said in a statement. “It’s critical that these drivers understand the potentially deadly consequences of engaging in these types of behaviors and that they change their behavior and attitudes in order to reverse the growing number of fatalities on U.S. roads.”

Considering AAA found this group is 1.6 times more likely than any other age group to have read a text while driving, and almost twice as likely to have sent one, some people undoubtedly will chalk this up to millennials being the worst generation. But we’re not so sure that’s the case.

If you ask us, teaching somebody to drive is fairly easy, but getting a teen to fully comprehend they’re not invisible is damn near impossible. This isn’t something new, either.

Most adults probably will tell you they did a lot of stupid things when they were younger because they didn’t understand just how dangerous they were. We’re willing to bet if cell phones were around when our parents were growing up, they would’ve been tempted to glance at them when they got a text.

AAA’s data more or less supports our theory too. Apart from drivers ages 16 to 18, the majority of whom likely did most of their driving with a parent riding shotgun, each age group is better-behaved than the one beneath it.

Here is the percentage of each age group that admitted to engaging in a dangerous habit while driving in the last 30 days:

Ages 19 to 24: 88.4 percent

Ages 25 to 39: 79.2 percent

Ages 40 to 59: 75.2 percent

Ages 16 to 18: 69.3 percent

Ages 75-plus: 69.1 percent

Ages 60 to 74: 67.3 percent

Thumbnail photo via AAA