Good article and food for thought, specially regarding political representation for young people.

Just one thing, on your graph the labels are mis-matched. X should be age group and Y number of miles. The other posibility is that I am simply confused and 8-year-olds driving is a rather common thing. Of course they are going to crash more after driving 70 miles, their attention span is not working in their favour.

....Do we know where this data comes from? Because I went through the following thought process: what's that blip where the crashes increase at 19 years of age? Oh, wait, legal drinking age... oh, wait, not in the US.

Just thought I should point out that although elderly drivers have more accidents per mile driven, they drive very few miles. Their "crash involvement rates in pure magnitudes" are the lowest of any group.

The high crash rate for elderly drivers only increases to the level of teenage drivers when they are over 80 years old. There are considerably more teenage drivers 16-19 on the road than 80+ year olds. Objectively, teenagers are considerably more of a threat than the elderly, which explains the targeting of this age group.

Someone on 538 pointed out that because (1) this is only fatal accidents, (2) fatalities include driver fatalities, and (3) in an accident of given severity an 85 year old is far more likely to die than an 18 year old, this data is misleading. A better statistic would be fatalities of people in other cars per 100m miles by driver age of the person at fault.

Am I the only one who thinks that the giant slingshot looks really fun?

Well, teenagers can't vote. Or rather, by the time they can vote, the rates of accidents have already fallen.

On a broader scale, teenagers have the political problem that 90% of the electorate considers themselves to have "paid their dues" by no longer being young, whereas nearly every member of the electorate assumes that they will one day be old. Thus, it is perfectly okay to mock young people, because you will never again be the target of that mocking, whereas it's not acceptable to mock old people (unless they want to have sex, mind you), because some day, if all goes well, you will be that person.

Those same 16 and 17 year olds are still considered their parent's property, after all.

Whatever they're doing in the first commercial looks FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUNNNN!

As someone who watches teenagers tear up and down my quiet street every day when school lets out, I'm having a really, really hard time finding any objection to the commercials on any level.

On the other hand, I think that older drivers should be tested, not given an automatic renewal after the age of 80. We acknowledge that younger drivers have limitations, why not older drivers?

A point I've always wondered about in the "teen driver" statistics/stereotypes topic is the fact that the vast majority of people are learning to drive in their teens. Think about the first time you did a sport or tried a new skill. Regardless of your age, without experience you probably were worse at it than people who'd been doing it for years. Who is to say someone who learns how to drive at 20 will be far better at first than someone at 17? Like any other skill, there is a learning curve. I'm sure it doesn't help that the learning curve correlates with a time of experimentation in most teens' lives, but I don't buy that the reason teenagers have accidents the most is solely due to their age. The commercials don't mock the fact that we're learning a new skill. They play up the "reckless", "video-game consumed", "danger-seeking" characteristics that we all apparently possess.

I don't think it's discrimination to play off of the fact that young drivers have more accidents. I'm 17 and I know I (as well as the majority of young drivers) have trouble keeping up with all the rules of the road and all the little complexities. We're new to driving and we're inexperienced, it's only natural that we'll be bad at it. And we'll grow out of it, so it's not like they're making fun of some flaw or personality trait we can't change. I think suggesting this is discrimination is a bit of a stretch.

The reason they wouldn't target the elderly is because it's not fair--the elderly won't grow out of it and it's less likely that they're just being reckless. In addition, I think society feels the same way about the elderly as they do about babies. People are sort of protective about the elderly, and I think that's probably the root of this problem. It's not that teenagers are being unfairly represented, it's that old people aren't seen as equal to the rest of society. They're seen as inferior because they aren't as physically capable of being independent, and thus people feel protective and even superior, which creates a sense that the elderly should be somewhat "immune"--if you will--because they're seen as weak and incapable. I think that's the real problem with this driving phenomenon.

I had a completely different interpretation of the slingshot ad when I saw it on tv. I thought it wasn't targeting the viewer and saying "watch out for teen drivers." I thought it was directed at parents and saying "watch out for your kids by getting them a safe car."

The second ad makes me reconsider, though.

Wouldn't that be a smarter campaign? Parents are ridiculously obsessive about the safety of their children.

While this ad campaign may work, in part because of inherent "ageism" on that part of the public, I think it also provides many of us with on opportunity to reflect on our own teenage follies and laugh at them (yes, I too was that stupid when I was sixteen. And damn it was fun). I think most consumers would take the ads as being rather tongue-in-cheek and perhaps, a small but justified dig at an over-entitled generation that is constantly telling us we're "lame" or "boring" (trust me, I know this to be a fact; I teach high school).

Also, one has to consider the dynamics of power structures in humour. There's something far more acceptable about taking shots at a relatively powerful group (teens have youth, beauty and more spending power and "choices" than ever before), rather than one who's power is faltering (the elderly have enough to deal with including failing health, loss of their livelihoods, family and friends, increasing poverty rates and so on). While it's true that both groups are fairly accident prone, clearly, taking a shot at the youth is something more akin to making fun of politicians in power (something us Canadians excel at) rather than at say, special interest groups (something that is considered distasteful, if not downright offensive). The fact that the target of our humour is perfectly capable of defending it's own "honour" has a lot to do with the acceptability of the joke.

Personally, I find these ads hilarious, and to be more of a commentary about how silly/warped society as a whole can be. I have no interest in buying their cars though. ;-)

I would be worried in general about anyone that was really that bad at Crazy Taxi...

I think it is wrong to generalize people by their age. It's just like just like categorizing people by their race- just because they are teen drivers does not mean they are any worse of a driver than adults. Young drivers are put into a group that classifies them as immature behind the wheel with no concern for other drivers. However, not I nor one of my friends (all of us who have had our licenses for 2+ years) have gotten in an accident or received a ticket. All of us are even better drivers than some of our parents who roll stop signs, tailgate, and never use blinkers. It is also a fact that more DUIs are by adults than young drivers, so the commercials targeting young drivers is pretty ridiculous.

Picking on teens is like picking on the rich anyway, they can handle it. Their full of life, health, energy, and optimism. An old person has a trillion things to worry about, if the biggest thing a teen has to worry about is killing themselves by voluntarily driving the car their parents bought them at a ridiculous speed, who cares. It's like crying a rich person drowned in their own pool.

another thing that no one mentions is try having an accident in the rubbish cheap cars that young people are economically forced to drive and coupled with thier inexperience pitch it agaist a volvo or a mercedes and we all no what will come off the best.

We need to force car manufacturers to make quality safe cars. Life should not be compromised for saving a buck or two especially not for the young.

Also Young People learn through their mistakes and if they manage they will learn to be better drivers older drivers like myself need to be aware it is not gona get any better we must recognise the time to hang up our keys.