National Safety Month and Teen Driving Safety

1. June 7-13: Teen Driving Safety
2. June 14-20: Preventing Overexertion at Work and at Home
3. June 21-27: Dangers of Cell Phone Use While Driving
4. June 28-30: Summer Safety

 

Teen Driving Safety is next week’s theme, so refresh your workers on the limits and precautions on teen drivers in the workplace. The number one hazard for teen work-related deaths and injuries on the job is working in or around motor vehicles, either driving or riding in cars or trucks or having an accident with a vehicle while walking or riding a bicycle. Teen jobs in this category may involve:

• Delivery, e.g., furniture, parcels, pizzas
• Traveling to provide home-based services, e.g., landscaping, appliance repair
• Residential trash pickup
• Road maintenance or construction
• Gas station or auto-repair work

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Teens have also been injured operating tractors, forklifts, loaders, and other heavy equipment.

Because of the dangers, only teenagers 17 and older may drive on the job. And even these driving teens have limitations on their driving job duties. They may drive as part of their jobs only if they:

• Have no record of moving violations when hired
• Drive 6,000 pound or lighter vehicles, equipped with seat belts, on public roads during daylight hours
• Are instructed to use seat belts
• Are licensed for that type of driving, after successfully completing state-approved driver education
• Drive inside a 30-mile radius from the workplace for up to a third of a workday or 20 percent of a workweek
• Make no more than two daily trips from their primary workplace to deliver goods to a customer or to transport passengers
• Do not tow, make route deliveries, route sales, urgent or time-sensitive deliveries, or transport property, goods, or passengers for hire
• Transport no more than three passengers, even if they are other employees

Keep teenagers and their co-workers safe on the job by making sure both older workers and teenagers know and follow these restrictions on teen driving in the workplace.

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Why It Matters

• For 16- to 20-year-olds, nearly one in every three deaths is caused by a crash.
• Collisions are the number one cause of teen death.
• Vehicle crashes are the leading cause of death and injury for U.S. teens between the ages of 15 to 19.
• The death toll is equivalent to about 17 deaths per day for people involved in teen driver crashes.
• For teens, the likelihood of being in a crash is at a lifetime high in the first 12 months and 1,000 miles of driving.

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