Teens don't do this one simple thing that could help save their lives

Brandon Turkus autoblog.com Hindsight being what it is, I now realize that I was a certifiable moron as a teenager. I thought I was far smarter and slicker than I actually was, and I took part in a spectacular array of things that, when viewed through the wiser eyes of someone pushing 30, were the height of stupidity. I'm sure most average Joes and Janes have a similar view of their adolescence. Throughout my teen years, though, I did do one thing correctly – I always wore my seatbelt.

Weirdly, that's a topic that today's teenagers have issue with. And no, this isn't just some rant about youth; there's empirical evidence to back up this troubling trend. A new report by the Governors' Highway Safety Association has revealed that of the teen drivers killed on the roads in 2012, over half (51.2 percent, to be precise) weren't wearing their seatbelts. We aren't sure what's worse, that that figure has jumped 6 percent in the past three years, or that teen passengers are 20 percent less likely to wear seatbelts than teen drivers.

"Crashes are already the leading cause of death for teens, and it is particularly disturbing to see the percentage of unbelted teen drivers and passengers in fatalities continue to rise," said the GHSA's executive director, Jonathan Adkins. to read more: autoblog.com