by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration

About the author: The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is a division of the U.S. Department of Transportation responsible for reducing deaths, injuries, and economic losses resulting from motor vehicle crashes.

The rate that young people died in alcohol-related crashes reached an historic low in 1998. For every 100,000 youth, ages 15 through 20, nine died in a crash where a driver or non-occupant had been drinking. The one-point reduction from 1997 to 1998 occurred primarily because the youth population increased by over a half million while the number of fatalities remained relatively stable (there were only eight fewer fatalities). For comparison purposes, in the early 1980s the alcohol-related fatality rate was consistently around twenty. What this means is that the odds of a teenager dying in an alcohol-related crash is half...