Young drivers are earning their licenses and hitting the road frequently during this time of year.

While younger drivers are always generally less safe, things have been changing on the roads. Safety controls have become tighter and fatalities and accident rates have been going down over the decades. That being said, road fatalities have been on a slight uptick in the US for the last few years, and there are widespread concerns that driver education has become outdated.

According to a survey by Volvo Reports, 60% of Americans believe that today’s driving tests are designed to be passed, not to test the driver. Dodging traffic cups in an empty parking lot used to be a normal American high school experience, but public driver education has become harder to access. When it comes to educating teenagers about driving, the majority of Americans agree that a simple test isn’t enough, so parents quite often take an active role in teaching their children how to drive. According to the same study, 51% of American drivers learnt the most about safe driving from their parents.

Teens are of course much more likely than other age groups to be involved in an accident. Among teenagers, male drivers are 2.5 times more likely to be involved in an accident than a teenage female driver according to a comprehensive study by ValuePenguin. According to the same study, summer is the deadliest time of the year for teen drivers, with almost 30% of fatalities taking place between the start of June and end of August.

There are big changes coming to roads across the world. Automated driving is the trend that is expected to change the way we get around going forward. During the transition, it might be best to first update driver education resources and make them more available.