With a national summit on distracted drivers set for this week, studies due today from the journal Pediatrics show that parents can have a huge effect on how effective — or distracted — their teen drivers become.

Conducted by Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, PA and given funding by State Farm Insurance Co., the studies show that parents who set specific driving boundaries and urge caution in their kids are a lot more likely to have kids who survive into adulthood. (more…)

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Teens aren’t going to like it, but what’s to like about being dead? Spurred by the fact that 5,000 teen drivers die annually in traffic accidents — and are 10 times more likely to have a crash than drivers 30-59 years old — some are calling for raising the driving age.

In Texas, that age is now 16. The lowest driving age is 14 years and three months (why the three months extra?) in South Dakota.  The highest driving age is 17, in New Jersey. And what’s happened in Bruce Springsteen country? The number of young drivers killed in teen driving crashes is consistently lower than in neighboring states with lower driving ages.

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