The truth is that it’s a lot easier to get away with driving while shitfaced out there, so the kids do it more.

That, and as any guides to the best party schools can attest, they drink a lot more than you guys do.

Gibberish.

Your point that despite common perception the city is a safer place for teens (and a better place for humans) is probably correct either way, but accident rates for a particular demographic should be calculated per miles driven, not by total number of drivers.

Another article to prove that Charles Mudede rarely leaves the confines of Seattle. There is only ONE reason that teens in rural areas get into more car crashes -- because they live in areas with open roads with with higher speeds. It's not an anti-urban conspiracy.

9% in King County? Holy crap. That is WAY higher than i'd have expected. Not to mention the 19% in the rural area. I may be remembering wrong, but I don't think anywhere near that percentage of the kids i knew growing up had serious/fatal crashes in their teens.

Actually, the premise of this piece is incorrect. the PI article doesn't say that 9 (or 19)% of teenage drivers were involved in crashes:

"In King County, roughly 9 percent of serious crashes involved a teen driver -- 267 crashes out of 2,962 -- putting it squarely in 22nd place statewide."

It discusses the percentage of crashes involving teens, not the percent of teens involved in crashes. This statistic is meaningless unless we know the percentage of miles driven by teens in both counties. Given that kids in rural areas have to drive further to school, work, sports etc. I would not be at all surprised if they drove a higher fraction of the total miles than they would in the city. If, hypothetically, the kids in Asotin County drove 19% of the total miles while in King County it was 9%, these numbers are exactly what you would expect.

I would guess that rural teen drivers drive more than urban teens. It's common sense that it's a longer drive to, well anywhere, for rural kids than urban kids.

I bet the same urban vs rural holds true for gun incidents and narcotics. Nothing to do in shit towns but get fucked up, play with guns and drive.

@5 Agree, but it was sort of interesting to look up overall crash rates by state (NHTSA uses accidents per 100M miles driven) to find the top 10 were all predominately rural states—then Florida and Arizona got in the top 15 (don't make me find the link again) and sort of screwed it all up.

@8,
Florida and Arizona have:

1) A lot of elderly drivers and,
2) A lot of "snowbirds." People who only live in AZ and FL during the winter and live in the Northern states during the summer.

A lot of elderly drivers who may be on the verge of not being qualified to drive anymore, along with their propensity to leave the state for long periods and forget driving patterns there could potentially explain the higher overall crash rates in those two states.

In a concrete jungle, one must stay on one's toes. Out in the great wide open, you're free as a bird, or a guy in a convertible in a commercial. The world is YOUR oyster, buddy! Drive it like you stole it.

Plus, where's the side of the road?!
Oh, and look out for that cow!

As has been pointed out, this 'study' tells nothing about the relative safety of rural vs urban teen drivers.
Furthermore, it doesn't even support Charle's sloppy lazy assumptions about rural folk;

"Least dangerous? That distinction goes to sparsely populated Wahkiakum, Garfield and Ferry counties, which all did not have a serious teen-involved crash from 2013-17.".....

@2: I disagree. Not needing to drive is far is part of why cities are safer for teens of driving age. Another reason is driving speed. Another reason is lighted streets. Another reason is the Urban Heat Island (city streets don't get frost and ice as often). You shouldn't be "correcting" for these reasons when coming up with accident statistics.

Put another way, if a city teen drives a half mile to the grocery store and a country teen drives 14 miles to a grocery store, that doesn't suddenly make it OK that country teens die from cars more often.

What is the point here? I grew up up over there. By and large, we are much better drivers than the west side kids. We learn driving in slippery conditions. You fuckheads think 1 single inch of snow is a reason to stay home. We would get fired for staying home for the crazy reasons I have heard. I have literally had coworkers stay home because there was a chance of snow. FUCKING PUSSY'S

"What his surprise exposed is America's deep-seeded hatred of the city."

If Americans hate the city, why do over 60% of us live in cities?

https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2015/cb15-33.html

I've lived in Seattle, Raleigh, and Chicago.
While I did get run into once biking down 2nd before the re-striping, that was a once in a decade event. When in NC, I got run over twice on foot by ignorant drivers making turns and not seeing people without headlights.
In Chicago, with traffic that makes it almost 2 blocks between lights (Denny can ... [insert epithet here] it.), I feel safest. It's a seriously great town to bike in. The ever-present bike shares and flat topographies have whipped the drivers into shape.

This is a lot of discussion over a "report" that looks like a blatant advertisement for an injury law firm.

These are some excellent caveats identified by @2 (accident rates should be normalized by miles driven), @5 (their metric doesn't tell us what percent of teens are involved in car accidents) and @16 (this "study" was produced by injurytriallawyer.com). Charles's current headline of "Teens Driving in Washington's Rural Areas Are More Likely to Be Involved in a Serious Car Crash" is totally unsupported, and his breathless rush to use it to justify that "rural == bad" is anti-intellectual pablum.

These are some excellent caveats identified by @2 (accident rates should be normalized by miles driven), @5 (their metric doesn't tell us what percent of teens are involved in car accidents) and @16 (this "study" was produced by injurytriallawyer.com). Charles's current headline of "Teens Driving in Washington's Rural Areas Are More Likely to Be Involved in a Serious Car Crash" is totally unsupported, and his breathless rush to use it to justify that "rural == bad" is anti-intellectual pablum.

ffffuuuuuuuuuuuu

@10 kristofarian: LOL! You are a treasure. I grew up in Skagit County and know of quite a few rural roads, always at their worst at the height of an annual madness called "Tulip Season" that would fit your description (imagine a gravel road with no shoulder on either side, just wide enough for a John Deere tractor, suddenly jammed with cars, tour buses, and RVs). Ironically, while I live in one of Washington's bigger cities, my beloved and I prefer the two-lane roads----so much more our speed. Regardless, we still drive defensively. One cannot be too certain about driver safety whether you're downtown, in the 'burbs, or in the toolies.

@13 inquiastidor: Are you from Eastern Washington or a region where the snow is drier and has more traction than the wet, slick and hazardous snow and black ice we have here, west of the Cascades? Unless you're referring to the pink knitted hat I wear proudly, I am otherwise NOT a "pussy", but just a smart, alert driver who knows better after thirty-five years on the road than to be out among idiots in adverse weather conditions.

Thank you Charles and all the commenters here. I needed a good article to highlight the use and misuse of data and statistics to my students. The analyses were spot on.

Rural roads are more dangerous than city roads. Thanks. It's fun to watch Millennials think they discovered something everyone else has known forever.

Another dimension to this is that even though rural drivers are more likely to be maimed or killed given higher average speeds, urban drivers get into far more accidents overall. Anyone that's ever moved from an urban area to a rural one or vice versa can tell you that based on what their insurance rates did.

Lemme shorten that up for ya Charles.

“Cool kids live in the city. The dumb kids live in the country.”

The supposed "analysis" is nothing more than someone pulling data from WSDoT, computing a simple proportion, and ranking them by county. There was no inference or consideration of uncertainty, and as many people have pointed out, the proportions reported may not even have much meaning for comparison. On top of all of that, the report was put out by an injury law firm and includes a link to their free booklet.

This is clearly paid content put out by the Seattle PI, and I have no idea why the Stranger picked it up as well.

This underlying data is that Asotin county there were 5 crashes involving teens over a 4 year period. Who cares?

CITY LIFE DONE MADE YOU SOFT!!!

Another "I hate cars" article from Charles.

Seriously dude when do you leave the city limits?

Good Morning Charles,
I don't dispute your post title, "Teens Driving in Washington's Rural Areas Are More Likely to Be Involved in a Serious Car Crash" but do some of your text.

In general, teen drivers and rural (not just Washington state) roads are more dangerous. It's a given for the former as driving insurance rates are very expensive at that age and only drop at age 25 y/o or higher. As for the latter, again no surprise that they are more dangerous. Rural roads are less regulated ( more curves, fewer stoplights, road signs etc.) and have a greater propensity to speeding.

But this article has less if anything to do with it being "safer" for a teen in the city than in the country. I don't believe there is any correlation.

Charles Mudede yammering his own bigoted talking points from lies about an article he read? Must be a day ending in 'y.'

Rural roads are notably safer for bicyclists than city roads, because city roads have hella intersections where cars can't see/don't expect bicycles and crash into them (look up the statistics), whereas rural roads don't experience those sorts of 'cross-traffic' situations nearly as frequently and have far fewer bicycle fatalities (as a percentage of bicycle miles driven).

I'll also note that --at least in WWII, the last war that counted (harrumph! ;o)-- Sargents (or whatever, IDK ranks) were always happy to have farm boys in their squad/platoon/midst because farm boys could already do things: shoot, fix stuff, were generally more robust, and they had that practical 'know how'. While effete, urban, city boys ('book smart'; /savoir/, not /connaitre/ ) were mostly useless as they had to be taught almost everything, and didn't know how to tinker with machinery. So, you know, different types of knowledge, differently privileged and important in different situations.

@12 I agree with your overall point, what I disagree with is that one can make an assertion that teen drivers are more or less dangerous in a particular part of the state by including teens that don't drive or ignoring distances traveled for teens that do drive.

@29 I, of all people, should forgive a typo, but your last sentence... "catch a bush" sounds like a perfectly reasonable way to stay safe after a night of hard partying.

@28 "This is clearly paid content put out by the Seattle PI, and I have no idea why the Stranger picked it up as well."

Is this your first time reading the Stranger? The majority of content boils down to "hey, look at this article!"