Distracted driving is to blame for almost 60 percent of traffic accidents involving teens, according to a new study conducted by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety.
AAA researchers were able to determine that distractions played a factor in 58 percent of all crashes studied, or four times the rate than what police reports suggested, according to the study.
For their study, researchers examined almost 6,900 videos from families who mounted cameras on both their teen drivers and the front windshield.
Crashes or hard-braking events were captured in 1,691 of those videos.
The videos that made the study possible were furnished by Lytx, the global leader in video-based driver safety technology.
"Making the road a safer place for everyone is our core mission, and Lytx is honored to have played such a key role in research of this magnitude and importance," said Brandon Nixon, Lytx Chief Executive Officer, in a company statement. "This project triggered an unparalleled, in-depth analysis of crash videos recorded using our DriveCam technology, specifically examining the behaviors of teen drivers, and the results are startling."
You would think that cell phones would be the biggest distraction for drivers between the ages of 16-19, but you'd be wrong. Conversations with other people in the car was the most common distraction leading to a crash among teen drivers, according to the study.
Other distractions noted by researchers include singing or moving to music, talking on cell phones, looking at something outside the vehicle other than the road ahead and viewing or sending out text messages and emails.
Even though cell phones weren't the biggest distraction among teens, researchers determined that drivers using phones had their eyes off the road for approximately 4.1 of the 6 seconds before a crash, according to the study.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration previously estimated that distraction of all kinds is a factor in only 14 percent of teen driver crashes, according to NBC News. This is clearly no longer the case.
Teen drivers also have the highest crash rate of any age group. Nearly 963,000 drivers aged 16 to 19 were involved in a police-reported crash in the U.S. in 2013, according to the Associated Press. These incidents resulted in 2,865 deaths and more than 380,000 injuries.
Click below to view AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety's "Distractions and Teen Driver Crashes" video.
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