It’s pretty scary sometimes when you think about sharing the road with teens who are still just learning to drive.
However, according to a new study of fatal accidents involving drivers holding learner’s permits, if you have to share the road with these brand new drivers, North Carolina is one of the best places to do it.
In fact, the study found that North Carolina came in 5th out of 50 states and the District of Columbia in that regard since only 0.08 percent of fatal crashes in the state involved learner’s permit drivers – a rate of roughly a third that found in the state with the highest percentage.
The study, which was conducted by the Georgia-based injury focused law firm Bader Scott, analyzed the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s motor vehicle crash data of crashes that occurred between 2017 and 2021 in each state and the District of Columbia.
West Virginia came in best in class, with the lowest percentage of fatal crashes involving learner’s permit drivers in the US.
On the other end of the spectrum, Kentucky topped the rankings as the most dangerous state in the country for fatal crashes involving learner’s permit drivers, with a percentage of those crashes coming in at 2.2 percent. In the five years studied, Kentucky saw 5,392 fatal crashes with 119 learner’s permit drivers involved in those accidents.
The second least safe state for crashes involving learner’s permit drivers is Massachusetts, where there were 2,466 crashes overall, including 2,270 involving a driver with a full license and 78 without a license between 2017 and 2021. There were 44 that involved someone with a learner’s permit – giving the state a 1.78 percentage for fatal crashes involving a learner driver.
