A new study presented at the American Academy of Sleep Societies suggests that starting the school day earlier may lead to an increased number of car accidents involving teenagers. With car crashes being the number one killer of teens in the US, any new insights into this terrible epidemic could save thousands of lives every year.
The study in question compared the 2008 crash rates of high school students in two adjacent Virginia towns. The author of the study was Dr. Robert Vorona, an associate professor of internal medicine in the Division of Sleep Medicine at Eastern Virginia Medical School in Norfolk, VA.
Dr. Vorona relied on the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles for data on the accident rates among drivers aged 16 to 18 in the two towns. The two Virginia towns, Virginia Beach and Chesapeake, have similar demographics but start high school an hour and twenty minutes apart, 7:20 am and 8:40 am respectively. The study found that Virginia Beach, with its 7:20 am start time, had 65.4 crashes per 1,000 teen drivers compared to Chesapeake's, with its 8:40 am start time, 46.2 crashes per 1,000 teens. These figures equate out to a 41% difference in teen driver crashes.
Dr. Vorona will not outright make a direct correlation between teenage car crashes and early high school start times. He is quoted as saying, "This study did not prove by any means that early high school start times led to increased rates of car crashes. Instead, it shows an association between early risers and car crashes."
Dr. Vorona does however believe that when combined with other research, he suggests pushing for later start times, and goes onto to say that, "Early high school start times are problematic." Speaking on these later start times, Dr. Vorona goes on to say, "Teenagers need over nine hours sleep a night, and it looks like a large number of teens don't get sufficient sleep...part of that relates to the time that high schools begin."
Studies done on teen behavior agree with Dr. Vorona. "There are data that demonstrate that lack of sleep has negative consequences for teens," he said. "And some data show that younger drivers are more likely to have crashes when they have inadequate sleep."
A leading Kansas City auto accident attorney and Dr. Barbara Phillips, of the University of Kentucky College of Medicine, both agree with Dr. Vorona's claims. Dr. Phillips believes that teens are "biologically programmed" to become sleepy and wake up later than adults. "They truly can't help it. They're just not going to get sleepy at 10 p.m., so it's hard for them to get the eight to 10 hours of sleep they need to get when they have to catch the 7:30 bus," she says.
When you combine the lack of sleep with the act of driving, things turn dangerous. "Younger, inexperienced drivers don't fare well with additional handicaps such as impaired alertness caused by having to get up earlier than is natural for them," said Dr. Phillips. A leading Kansas City car crash attorney has witnessed first hand the dangerous combination that sleep-deprivation and driving can be.
Much like Dr. Vorona in Virginia, Dr. Phillips co-authored a study comparing car crash rates and the sleep of teen drivers. Hers in 1998 compared the crash rates for teens in Lexington, Kentucky after the school district instituted a later school start with the previous two years before the change in start time. The results of the study were conclusive; crash rates declined 16.5% in a period where teenage crash rates actually increased in the state of Kentucky by 7.8%.
Perhaps more states should listen to the research of Dr. Vorona and Dr. Phillips as well as the observations of Kansas City car crash attorneys and Kansas City auto accident attorneys everywhere and move high school start times back. The argument against doing so is that early start times allow for after school sports; there has to be a compromise because the world cannot afford to lose one more teenager to a car crash before their time.
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