Real Video Shows Distracted Teen Drivers Moments Before Things Go Wrong

We've all been there: motoring along, our minds somewhere else, when suddenly our attention snaps back to the road, and we realize that we're barreling toward the back end of a car or a semi or a squirrel. It happens. 

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It happens most frequently with inexperienced drivers -- especially teenagers, who have the highest crash rate of any demographic in America. And when it comes to teens, more often than not, the culprit isn't boredom or fatigue, but distraction.

To prove it, the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety conducted what it bills as "[t]he most comprehensive research ever conducted into crash videos of teen drivers". The Foundation sorted through nearly 1,700 videos retrieved from in-vehicle event recorders that had been installed on cars driven by teens. Those recorders saved 12-second clips of instances of hard braking, fast cornering, or particularly harsh impacts.

In analyzing those videos, researchers made the following discoveries: