A License for Adolescent Thrills Fuels Reckless Driving : Death doesn’t seem possible and being cool is top priority. That’s why car crashes are the No. 1 killer of teens.

He seemed perfectly all right when it was time to leave the party.

But when he steered the car erratically onto the freeway, Esther Martinez says she could tell that her teen-age friend--her ride home--had had too much to drink.

So quietly but firmly, the 16-year-old Los Angeles high school student asked him to pull over and let her drive. Finally, he did, and Martinez, who has had her license only five months, slipped into the driver’s seat and safely drove home.

An aberration? Hardly, although the tale’s happy ending might be classified as such.

While parents worry that their teen-agers’ lives will be jeopardized by a stray bullet, a sports injury or drug addiction, statistics suggest that the most lethal health hazard for teens is parked in the driveway.

Traffic crashes are the No. 1 killer of teen-agers in the United States. In 1993, 6,198 teen-agers died from motor vehicle crash injuries, according to the National Safety Council, and one of every three drivers ages 15 to 19 was involved in a traffic crash. Reckless driving on the teens’ part is often a factor.

Reckless driving includes speeding, racing, passing in a no-passing zone, and weaving in and out of traffic. (In California, a reckless driving citation may be issued if two or more “hazardous” moving violations occur simultaneously.)

Even more disturbing, there’s no typical profile to make intervention easier. The accident victims are honor roll students and truants, troublemakers and model kids. And, while restrictive measures such as a phase-in of driving privileges might stem the bloodshed, the approach with the highest success rate could be tincture of time. By age 24, young people demonstrate more maturity, at least behind the wheel, experts say.

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Teen-agers have a simple explanation for acting as they often do behind the wheel, says Jeffrey Arnett, an associate professor of human development and family studies at the University of Missouri-Columbia who researches adolescent reckless behavior. In two words: “It’s fun.”

To assess teen driving behavior, Arnett recently surveyed 133 suburban Atlanta teens, ages 17 and 18, asking how often they had participated in certain driving behaviors in the past year. The results were not surprising to Arnett, who says he spent his teen-age weekends drinking and driving in his hometown of Detroit:

* About 90% had driven more than 80 m.p.h. or at least 20 miles over the posted speed limit.

* More than 50% had raced in a car.

* More than 50% had passed in a no-passing zone.

* About 25% had driven after drinking an alcoholic beverage.

The need for what Arnett calls “sensation seeking”--or finding novel, intense experiences--defines American adolescence. For teens, driving fills the bill.

Charles Shelton, an associate professor of psychology at Regis University, Denver, agrees: “Just like taking drugs or having sex, it’s escapism. And young people want intensity. Getting behind the wheel of a car makes you feel powerful.”

Combine that intensity with the sense of identity a teen-ager gets from belonging to a group, and the logic, Shelton says, can unspool like this: “If I have a car, I get noticed in the group. If I drive fast, I get a reputation for being a cool driver.”

Nathan Bremmer, 18, has that kind of reputation, according to him and his friends James Outlaw and William Tijerina, both 16 and high school juniors in the Valley. On a recent weeknight, Outlaw and Tijerina sat outside a video game arcade at Burbank’s Media City Center, wondering about the whereabouts of Bremmer, who had been due to arrive half an hour earlier.

Suddenly, Bremmer floats down the escalator. Asked to describe the driving habits that earn him the reckless label, he sips his soda and grins. Probably, he says, his ability to crank up his car from zero to 80, or so he claims, in a one-block stretch of city street adjacent to school.

Why risk a ticket in an area often patrolled by police?

“ ‘Cuz it’s fun,” he says simply.

Outlaw and Tijerina, who don’t yet have licenses, say they know plenty of other less-than-cautious drivers. “Even my well-mannered, churchgoing friend goes at least 90 or 110 on the freeway,” Outlaw says.

Tijerina recalls a trip to an amusement park when he looked over and read the speedometer at 105. “I told him, ‘Relax, man,’ ” he recalls. “He slowed down--to 95.” Still, Tijerina claims he had no fear. “I knew if he had the courage to go that fast, he knew what he was doing.”

While that logic is lost on some adults, it makes perfect sense to Arnett and Shelton.

There’s the fear, they explain, of looking like the chicken in the group. And, of course, good old-fashioned teen-aged invulnerability. “Things that would frighten older people are the kind of thing younger people find intoxicating,” Arnett says. “They don’t really believe they can die.”

Driver inexperience also contributes to teen accidents, according to a status report issued late last year by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, an Arlington, Va., nonprofit organization.

Sixteen-year-old drivers are more likely to be in single-vehicle crashes, dying in such mishaps as a car spinning out of control and smashing into a utility pole. Driver error is more likely to blame when 16-year-olds are behind the wheel. Alcohol use, on the other hand, is more common in crashes involving college students than younger students, research by Arnett and others shows.

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Like many parents, Leon and Sharon Flores of Moreno Valley did everything right when it came to preparing their daughter, Kim, for driving. “She had professional driving lessons and we taught her,” Leon Flores says.

But it wasn’t enough. On an August night two years ago, Kim was driving home in the family’s Honda in a 45 m.p.h. zone when she was hit by an oncoming car driven by another 16-year-old who was doing about 70.

Kim died; her passenger and the other driver survived. He was sentenced to 15 days in Juvenile Hall, six months to a year probation and a 30- to 60-day work detail.

“We did everything we thought we should do,” Flores says. “Kim was a model student, college prep. We still get letters from colleges.”

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Experts say there are some ways to reduce the risks of highway-related teen deaths, which have declined in recent years.

Arnett has found that a teen’s mood might increase accident risk. In his Atlanta study, he asked 59 of the 133 teens surveyed to keep a driving log for 10 days. Each time they drove, they noted who was in the car, the destination, how fast they drove, whether they had drunk alcohol and their mood.

“The only mood related to driving recklessly was anger,” he says. Sadness didn’t relate to reckless driving, nor did fatigue. “Try to be careful your kid doesn’t use the car as a way to express anger,” Arnett advises parents.

Another option, recommended by the National Safety Council and others, is a graduated licensing program, which restricts vehicle use for beginners until age, driving experience and a clean record earn a driver full privileges. No state has a full graduated licensing program, says a spokeswoman for the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, but some have parts, such as driver education requirements. California is among them.

“We have most of the elements of a graduated licensing program,” says Evan Nossoff of the state Department of Motor Vehicles.

A California license is automatically provisional, for instance, until age 18. Licenses can be lifted from teens under 18 with fewer points than for older drivers. There are education requirements, including classroom and behind-the-wheel. The driving tests, he adds, are more realistic and tougher.

* Paul Singleton of the Times Editorial Library contributed to this article.