When we’re all squeez­ing into someone’s car, we tend to forgo much care over how many seats are actu­ally avail­able. Oh, we’re two seats short– we’ll just squeeze every­one in. It’s all too incon­ve­nient and too much of a has­sle to get another car for just another few peo­ple when every­one can see the amount of space left over in the car where peo­ple can squish in, or, in some cases, maybe even sit on top of each other. Besides, then we can announce our flirt­ing with the law– and likely each other, if we are sit­ting on someone’s lap– across our social network(s) of choice later, auto­mat­i­cally label­ing us as fun, liked, and “cool”.

And any­way, what are the risks that we’ll get into a car crash, any­way? It’s really not worth the bother of get­ting another driver…

By car­ry­ing just one pas­sen­ger the risk for a crash increases by 50 per­cent. With three or more pas­sen­gers, the risk is nearly four times greater than while dri­ving alone.

That’s insane. And as the nor­mal teenage motor vehi­cle crash rates are about 2–3 times higher than those for all other ages, it’s a pretty high chance. And let’s not for­get, 63% of all teenage pas­sen­ger deaths in 2008 hap­pened while a teenager was driving.

So why does the risk increase so much? Con­cen­trated on the road or not, whoever’s dri­ving will want to pitch in on the con­ver­sa­tion, which draws his or her focus away from where it should be—the road.

As well, since there’s not enough seat­belts, peo­ple will be slid­ing. In the event of a car crash, which is pretty high con­sid­er­ing motor vehi­cle crashes are the lead­ing cause of death among 15–20 year olds, the force you will hit the clos­est object with is astounding.

Let’s say you’re around 100 pounds—that’s about 8,000 pounds of force you’ll be thrown with. 150 pounds, then, is about 12,000 pounds of force, and so on. Trust me, it would be extra­or­di­nar­ily uncom­fort­able to be hit by your friend with that amount of force. It could very eas­ily kill you. In fact, it has killed many peo­ple, with nearly 5,000 teenagers dying in car crashes nation­ally ever year and over 300,000 injured.

I know it’s annoy­ing to have to worry about get­ting rides, and it’s much more prefer­able to have your friend drive than a par­ent. But don’t we all spend time installing firefox—or what­ever browser you prefer—instead of stick­ing to safari or inter­net explorer, because we’re pro­tec­tive of our com­put­ers? Are not our own lives more impor­tant than those of our macs and pcs?

That small amount of time and effort taken to make sure there’s enough seats avail­able for every­one can lessen the risk of crash­ing dra­mat­i­cally, and that might just save your life—whether lit­er­ally, or in the being-able-to-continue-following-your-dreams sense.