Notts: Teenager passenger crash figures

Flowers at the scene of a fatal road traffic crash on the A638 near Retford G130917-3b

The statistics from the RAC Foundation show that in 2013, one teen was killed, two were seriously injured and another 31 were injured.

In 2013 - the latest year for which figures are available - 234 teenage car passengers were killed or seriously injured when the young driver (17-19) they were travelling with was involved in a crash in the UK, which is more than four a week.

When casualties of all severities are included, the annual figure rose to 2,144 or around 41 each week.

Professor Stephen Glaister, director of the RAC Foundation, said: “The casualty figures do not cast blame for accidents, but given the disproportionate number of young drivers involved in accidents the conclusion must be that many teenagers are being killed by the inexperience of their friends at the wheel.”

“Factor in casualty figures for young drivers themselves and other people who might be involved in these accidents and the scale of the problem only gets bigger.”

The data also shows that of all teenage car passengers killed or seriously injured over this period in the UK, around 45 per cent were passengers in cars driven by 17-19 year-olds, 23 per cent were passengers in cars driven by 20-24 year-olds, 31 per cent were passengers in cars driven by somone aged 25 and over, and one per cent were passengers in cars driven by someone aged 16 and under.

Previous research showed that teenage drivers make up 1.5 per cent of full licence holders, however they are involved in 12 per cent of accidents where someone is killed or seriously hurt.

“The coalition Government repeatedly promised to publish a Green Paper on young driver safety and repeatedly failed to do so. In the meantime, young people have continued to die. We would urge the new Government to do what the last one did not and debate the subject formally and publicly,” Mr Glaister added.