If you are injured and the adverse driver is an under aged adult in the state of Oregon or Washington a good injury lawyer would investigate. The reason they would investigate is to see whether there are any special laws dealing with the youth driver is required to have an older passenger. In Oregon, drivers 16 years of age must have an adult passenger in certain situation and during certain times.

I just read in the NY Times that motor vehicle accidents with under age drivers are on the decline. Perhaps this is because of the state legislatures’ move nationwide to restrict young driver in their driving before age 18. In Oregon driving restrictions do apply and even common law tort law may be involved since parents are always responsible for the torts of their children.

From my experience in handling injury cases- probably thousands over the last 16 years- I believe that underage driver do cause more accidents and they are usually more serious high impact accidents than adults. In the end a proper investigation as to whether the driver was driving up to the bar required by law will be important to maximize the recovery you may get since it would turn into an aggravated liability case if the underage driver violated the law when driving.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 26th, 2008 at 9:29 am and is filed under Car Accidents. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.