LAS VEGAS -- Teens are among the most dangerous drivers on the road. A recent study Governors Highway Safety Association says in the first six months of 2011, the number of vehicle fatalities among those teens went up across the nation.
At Valley High School, students are not allowed to leave campus until school is out. That means no getting in your cars and driving somewhere for lunch.
It's a district-wide policy and may be one of the reason why Nevada had zero car fatalities among 16 to 17-year-olds from 2010 to 2011. The study tracked all states and only five states had no fatalities for two years among that age group. Nevada was one of them.
Erin Breen with UNLV's Safe Community Partnership group does traffic studies. She says strict licensing guidelines were put in place a few years back that have led to the decrease in numbers.
Some of the guidelines include 50 hours of logged drive time before a license is issued. Ten of those hours must be at night.
"Because we looked at the data and what we came up with is that kids were dying at night. So 10 of those hours must be when it's dark because it's a different driving experience," said Breen.
New teen drivers are not allowed to have friends in the car with them for the first six months to prevent any driver distractions -- only a relative is allowed to drive with them.
A lot of students said they were not happy about some of these laws, but in the end, it was those laws that may have saved them.
