Deadly Texas crash with 13-year-old driver draws attention to rural custom of allowing young teens behind the wheel

Texas state troopers survey the wreckage from a fatal March 16 crash in west Texas caused by a 13-year-old driver. (Associated Press photo by Eli Hartman)

A deadly crash is drawing renewed attention to the common rural practice of allowing young teenagers and even younger children to drive. Nine people died in West Texas last week when a 13-year-old driving a pickup truck blew a tire and overcorrected, striking a van carrying members of the men's and women's golf teams of the University of the Southwest, a private Christian school in Hobbs, N.M. The teen and his 38-year-old father were killed, along with a golf coach and six students, Gene Johnson reports for The Associated Press. The crash occurred in Andrews County, about 30 miles east of the New Mexico border.

"At a news conference in Odessa, Texas, on Thursday, National Transportation Safety Board Vice Chairman Bruce Landsberg said the dangers of underage driving put it on the agency’s 'most-wanted list'," Johnson reports. "Along with drunk and distracted driving, Landsberg said 'youthful driving' and excessive speed on rural roads are among the problems that make highway driving the most dangerous form of transit in the United States."

In 2020 alone, drivers aged 13 and under were involved in 47 fatal crashes and 1,057 crashes that caused injuries, according to National Highway Traffic Safety Administration data. And though there aren't specific statistics on where such underage drivers live, rural roads are nearly twice as deadly overall: "In 2019, the fatality rate per 100 million vehicle miles traveled was 1.9 times higher in rural areas than in urban areas," Johnson reports. Put another way: nearly half the nation's traffic fatalities in 2019 happened on rural roads, though less than one-fifth of the population is rural.

There were other risk factors: The crash happened at night, on a road with a 75 mile-per-hour speed limit, the tire that blew was a spare not meant for high-speed use, and the driver was a teenage male—one of the highest-risk segments of the driving population, Johnson reports. Several people he interviewed recalled learning to drive on the family farm when they were as young as 10, but also said their parents emphasized safety and refused to let them to drive on public roads until they were legally allowed. One man observed that the road where the crash happened had heavy traffic from nearby oil fields, and said no 13-year-old should have been driving on it to begin with.

William Van Tassel, who manages the American Automobile Association's driver training programs, told Johnson that, while rural teens frequently start driving at a younger age than their suburban and urban peers, that doesn't mean they're ready to hit the highway: "When it comes to public roads, the laws are pretty clear: You can’t be out there until you’re legally eligible."