It’s almost the summer again, and high school students everywhere are excited to get out for the summer months and have a relative amount of freedom. The same goes for many college students. Even when they have summer jobs, these months of freedom with their friends are much different than the school year.
They’re also much more dangerous. Dubbed the “100 deadliest days of summer,” these three months are some of the most dangerous times on the road that anyone will ever experience. There’s a consistent spike in fatal car crashes caused by teenage drivers over the summer, and thousands of lives have been lost to the spike over the years. Many more people have suffered catastrophic injuries that may have resulted in life-altering disabilities, even though they did survive these crashes.
Why is there a spike?
These two things really go hand-in-hand. Students may be excited to not have to go to school for the summer, and they may enjoy the freedom that they get, but it also means that a lot of young drivers spend far more time behind the wheel. Since these drivers are in such a high-risk category and make a lot of mistakes due to their inexperience and other factors, they tend to cause a disproportionate number of accidents.
This spike in deadly crashes will go back down once students return to school. Having them in the classroom makes everyone safer because it keeps them off of the road. but you certainly could suffer serious injuries in an accident over the summer, or a loved one may lose their life, and then you need to know how to seek financial compensation from the driver who was responsible.