Survey: Montana is Last in Teen Driver Training and Safety

Missoula, MT (KGVO-AM News) - A devastating report titled ‘The Best and Worst States for Teen Drivers’ from the website WalletHub finds that Montana ranks as the very worst in the country and in the bottom ten percent in four important safety metrics.

I spoke to Wallet Hub analyst Chip Lupo who provided the numbers from the study.

Montana Ranks Poorly in Teen Driving Safety and Training

“We compared the 50 states across three key dimensions, safety, economic, environment and driving laws,” began Lupo. “We evaluated those dimensions using 23 relevant metrics, and those range everything from driving schools per capita, quality roads, maximum cost of speeding tickets, average cost of car repairs and things such as distracted driving and texting while driving laws among others.”

Lupo said driver safety was the most concerning of the Wallet Hub findings.

Montana Ranked First in Teen Fatalities and Last in Poor Driving Behavior

“In the safety dimension, Montana ranked 50th, (last) including the absolute highest in a metric we call traffic and discipline,” he said. “Now that's a composite metric, and that measures incidents resulting from poor behavior, which could be anything from phone use, speeding, aggressive acceleration, harsh braking. 50^th (first) in teen driver fatalities for population, and 49^th in the cost of crash related deaths per 100,000 teens.”

Lupo used plain language to lay out the danger to young drivers in Montana.

“What that means is basically the highest number of and this, again, this is a per capita, but more teen teenagers die in traffic related fatalities in Montana than any other state per capita,” he said.

Lupo provided some suggestions on how Montana can become a safer state for teen drivers.

The Spokesman Said Montana Must Be More Aggressive in Enforcement

“What Montana and other states can do is to be a little more aggressive in enforcement,” he said. “One thing where I noticed that all of these states kind of were in the middle or in the lower end, were in these distracted driver laws, texting, texting while driving, using the phone, and a little more harsh on DUIs and any kind of impairment driving. If states can crack down on those a little bit more, I think the numbers would improve greatly.”

One metric Lupo mentioned was the lack of professional driver training schools in Montana.

According to the Wallet Hub survey, Montana was:

50^th overall in teen driver fatalities per 100,000 teens.

47^th in teen DUI’s per 100,000 teens

47^th presence of distracted driving/texting-while-driving laws, and

43^rd in vehicle miles traveled per capita.

The vast majority of teens take drivers training classes through the public school system.

I am reaching out to school districts in Missoula and Billings, as well as the Montana Highway Patrol for responses to the Wallet Hub report.