Teens, as a group, have terrible driving records. In fact, they have the worst. While teenagers make up only about 10 percent of the population, they're responsible for 15 percent of the accidents.

Statistically, it doesn't even matter if the young person took a driver's ed course -- graduates of these courses have just as many accidents as those learned from parents or private driving schools. The only thing that makes a teen driver a better driver is experience, practice, and guidance. In other words, a great deal of burden of raising a safe driver falls on the parent.

Crashes involving teen drivers aren't like those involving older drivers -- even those a year or two older, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. Teen drivers have two problems -- their inexperience and their immaturity. They can't handle the minor emergencies yet, but they naturally want to rebel against authority -- that includes speeding and not wearing seatbelts. That results in some specific types of crashes, as well as an increased rate of accidents when teens travel together without an adult.

The result is a crash rate per mile that's three times as high as 18- and 19-year-olds. Most of those are single-vehicle, run-off-the-road crashes, which involve driver error or speeding. They often occur when other young people are in the vehicle with the young driver.

What can you do?

Buy a safe car -- something big, with airbags. Stay away from high-performance vehicles, which are beyond the skill level of new drivers.

Impose a driving curfew and prohibit late night driving that's unsupervised. Teen outings late at night tend to be recreational and pose more risk -- the rate of nighttime fatal crashes per 100 million miles traveled in 1995-96 by 16- to 19-year-old male drivers was about four times the rate for 30- to 54-year-old male. Fifty-three percent of teenage motor vehicle deaths in 1997 occurred on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, and 41 percent of teenage motor vehicle deaths occurred between 9 pm and 6 am.

Teach your children well, use a driving contract to supervise their use of the car, and use a checklist to monitor their driving progress. Yes, it's a burden -- even an inconvenience. But it beats the alternative.