RIP, Kaylee Hottle (and more): On Motor Vehicle Accident Deaths and Young Adults
Kids, Speed as rate of motion is as deadly as the drug
When “died suddenly” appears in the news, there are multiple causes it could be, but a car crash is not necessarily very mysterious:
21 July 2026, TMZ: ‘Godzilla vs. Kong’ Actress Kaylee Hottle Dead at 18
Kaylee Hottle -- a deaf actress best known for playing Jia in two ‘Godzilla’ films -- is dead.
Her father, Joshua Hottle, tells TMZ ... his daughter was killed in a car accident early Tuesday morning in Maryland.
22 July 2026, People: Godzilla vs. Kong Actress Kaylee Hottle’s Cause of Death Revealed [emphasis added]
The Godzilla vs. Kong actress’ father Joshua Hottle shared with TMZ that the young Deaf actress, best known for playing Jia in the Godzilla x Kong franchise, was involved in a car accident on July 21 and died while being transported to a hospital. She was 18.
A day later, PEOPLE confirmed her cause of death to be multiple blunt force injuries, ruling her manner of death an accident, per the Maryland Office of the Chief Medical Examiner.
An investigation by the Frederick County Sheriff’s Office revealed new details about the fatal car crash, including that the single-vehicle collision of a 1995 Honda Accord took place in the 11400 block of Windsor Road in the town of Ijamsville, Maryland.
The preliminary investigation determined that a 19-year-old man from Frederick was driving the vehicle with two other passengers in the early hours of July 21. The car was traveling down a two-lane road when it drifted off the right side and struck a culvert.
“Excessive speed is believed to be a contributing factor in the collision,” a release from the sheriff’s office read.
This is the press release from the sheriff’s office: Fatal Single-Vehicle Crash Under Investigation in Ijamsville (not quoting it — the salient details are above: single vehicle and excessive speed).
I also saw other news items of 4 teens who died recently in Chicago while trying to flee from police at high speed and then driving off a bridge into the side of freight train cars. I also have been receiving several local car crash stories, many of which were fatalities — almost all of these were single-vehicle crashes.
No, I’m not linking these. You can find your own local stories, too, I bet.
Yes, I noticed the recent notable motorcycle crash death, but I will put that one to the side for now. Here’s my most recent post on motorcycle crash deaths:
One item to point out is that motor vehicle accidents are a high percentage of the cause of accidental deaths for young adults/teens (age 15-24), up there with drug overdoses.
For the 15-24 year-old group, for the year 2023 above, 51%, or half of the accidental deaths, were from motor vehicle accidents. The second most common accidental cause was drug overdoses, at 39%
Let us focus solely on the age 15-24 year-old trend in recent years, on those top two accidental causes: drug overdoses and motor vehicle accident deaths. I will also look at the NHTSA (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration) reports on characteristics of fatal car crashes, as they give far more detail than CDC WONDER aggregations.
Comparison of Age 15-24 U.S. Motor Vehicle Accident and Drug Overdose Deaths, 1999-2025
The 2025 data are provisional.
First, let’s look at raw numbers, not rates.
Yes, there was an over-50% increase in drug OD deaths for age 15-24 year-olds from 2019 to 2020.
The number of deaths is more concrete for people, but the rates are what we should really look at for long-term comparisons. It doesn’t look too different, though.
The drug OD story is not that great. The recent drop-off… who knows if that will persist.
But let us look more closely at the MVA (motor vehicle accident) death trend, which has been pretty flat, more or less, since the reduction in the early 2000s.
Quick Take: Early 2000s Drop of Young Adult MVA Death Rate Due to Graduated DL Programs — Plausible
By the way, this sounds about correct:
Graduated driver licensing for reducing motor vehicle crashes among young drivers (2011)
Citation: Russell KF, Vandermeer B, Hartling L. Graduated driver licensing for reducing motor vehicle crashes among young drivers. Cochrane Database Syst Rev. 2011 Oct 5;2011(10):CD003300. doi: 10.1002/14651858.CD003300.pub3. PMID: 21975738; PMCID: PMC13110912.
Abstract: [emphasis added]
Background: Graduated driver licensing (GDL) has been proposed as a means of reducing crash rates among novice drivers by gradually introducing them to higher risk driving situations.
Objectives: To examine the effectiveness of GDL in reducing crash rates among young drivers.
Search strategy: Studies were identified through searching MEDLINE, EMBASE, CINAHL, Healthstar, Web of Science, NTIS Bibliographic Database, TRIS Online, SIGLE, the World Wide Web, conference proceedings, consultation with experts and reference lists in relevant published literature. The searches were conducted from the time of inception to May 2009, and the Cochrane Injuries Group conducted an updated search of the TRANSPORT database in September 2009.
Selection criteria: Studies were included if: 1) they compared outcomes pre- and post-implementation of a GDL program within the same jurisdiction, 2) comparisons were made between jurisdictions with and without GDL, or 3) both. Studies had to report at least one objective, quantified outcome.
Data collection and analysis: Results were not pooled due to substantial heterogeneity. Percentage change was calculated for each year after the intervention, using one year prior to the intervention as baseline. Results were adjusted by internal controls. Analyses were stratified by denominators (population, licensed drivers). Results were calculated for the different crash types and presented for 16 year-olds alone as well as all teenage drivers.
Main results: We included 34 studies evaluating 21 GDL programs and 2 analyses of >40 US states. GDL programs were implemented in the US (n=16), Canada (n=3), New Zealand (n=1), and Australia (n=1) and varied in their restrictions during the intermediate stage. Based on the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) classification, eleven programs were good, four were fair, five were marginal, one was poor and two could not be assessed. Reductions in crash rates were seen in all jurisdictions and for all crash types. Among 16 year-old drivers, the median decrease in per population adjusted overall crash rates during the first year was 15.5% (range -27 to -8%, five studies). There was a decrease in per population adjusted injury crash rates (median -21%, range -46 to -2%, five studies). Results for all teenage drivers, rates per licensed driver, and rates adjusting for internal controls were generally reduced when comparing within jurisdictions.
Authors’ conclusions: GDL is effective in reducing crash rates among young drivers, although the magnitude of the effect varies. The conclusions are supported by consistent findings, temporal relationship, and plausibility of the association. Stronger GDL programs (i.e. more restrictions or higher quality based on IIHS classification) appear to result in greater fatality reduction. Future studies should focus on which components and combination of components yield the greatest reductions.
In the “related articles” list and citations, there were articles about fatal crashes — and yes, it seems that graduated licensing, specifically for teens, had a reduction effect on fatalities.
I pulled the article that had free access, as many others were behind academic paywalls.
Recent NHTSA Reports: Speed Kills
July 2026, NHTSA: Traffic Safety Facts — Speeding
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration considers a traffic crash to be speeding-related if any driver in the crash was charged with a speeding-related offense or if a police officer indicated that racing, driving too fast for conditions, or exceeding the posted speed limit was a factor in the crash. A speeding-related fatality is any fatality that occurs in a speeding-related traffic crash.
Key Findings
• Twenty-eight percent of fatal crashes, 13 percent of injury crashes, and 8 percent of property-damage-only crashes in 2024 were speeding-related.
• In 2024 there were 11,288 fatalities in speeding-related crashes, 29 percent of total traffic fatalities for the year and a decrease of 5 percent from 11,913 in 2023.
• There were an estimated 316,757 people injured (13% of total people injured) in speeding-related traffic crashes in 2024.
• Thirty-nine percent of male drivers and 20 percent of female drivers in the 15-to-20 age group in fatal traffic crashes in 2024 were speeding, the highest among all the age groups.
• Among speeding drivers in fatal traffic crashes in 2024, there were 27 percent who did not have valid driver licenses at the time of the crashes, compared to 14 percent of non-speeding drivers.
• Thirty-seven percent of speeding drivers in fatal crashes in 2024 had blood alcohol concentrations (BACs) of .08 grams per deciliter (g/dL) or greater, while 17 percent of non-speeding drivers were in this BAC range. Speeding drivers were more likely to have BACs of .15 g/dL or greater (25% versus 11%)—than those drivers who were not speeding.
• Thirty-seven percent of motorcycle riders in fatal traffic crashes in 2024 were speeding, more than drivers of any other vehicle type.
Note what the definition is, of course, of a speed-related crash. Most of the speed-related fatal crashes, everybody will agree that was the case. (Such as the ones I mentioned at the top of the post).
Speed is generally going to be involved in fatal crashes, in terms of needing to have been going pretty fast to translate into forces to kill. That said, the speed itself would not have caused the crash in those cases. That’s the point.
Let’s look at this graph:
Figure 1 presents the percentages of drivers who were speeding when involved in fatal traffic crashes by age group and sex. The proportions of male drivers who were speeding decreased with increasing driver age, and the proportions of female drivers who were speeding were smaller than male drivers across all age groups. Among all age groups, young male drivers were the most likely to be speeding at the time of fatal crashes. In 2024 more than one-third (39%) of male drivers in the 15-to-20 age group in fatal crashes were speeding at the time of the crashes, the highest proportion among all age groups. Among female drivers, the highest speeding involvement (20%) was also in the 15-to-20 age groups.
Yes, I know it’s been controversial to teen males (and parents of teen males) or how expensive auto insurance is for them. Well. There’s a reason for that.
If you want rates tailored to your behavior instead of getting broader age- and sex-based rates, some insurers offer various telematics solutions. If sex-based rates are forbidden, everybody gets the male rates (well, maybe not exactly the male ones, but close to them).
Being a speed demon means you’re more likely to lose control of the vehicle (especially if you blow a tire, or hit a pothole or other irregularity in the road). And, of course, the faster you’re going, the more devastating the crash.
Here is one other piece of info, on the NHTSA’s 2024 report on motor vehicle crashes: more people die in single-vehicle crashes than multivehicle crashes:
Traffic fatalities in single-vehicle crashes decreased 3.4 percent (21,974 in 2023 to 21,224 in 2024). In comparison, fatalities in multivehicle crashes decreased 5.4 percent (19,051 in 2023 to 18,030 in 2024).
When people think about fatal car crashes, often people think about two vehicles crashing, but often, it’s a single vehicle colliding with something stationary (like a tree/guardrail/building).
Be careful out there, kids
I’ve written about MVA deaths before, and pre-pandemic, it was the oldest and youngest drivers who had the highest death rates.
With lockdowns, the MVA death rates for seniors dropped, and it went up for young drivers.
From here:
It turned out that was related to speed.
One thing I noticed in the reports is that when they measured the distribution of speeds on the roads pre-lockdown and post-lockdown, it wasn’t mainly that top speeds increased, but that the slowest speeds (20th percentile, say) increased. The slow drivers weren’t around — you know, the oldest people stayed home.
And that explains why the older adults’ traffic deaths dropped, and the speed demons could really let loose. Top speeds were what they always were — it’s just that the overall flow of traffic could be faster without the pace cars of the highways slowing everybody else down.
Because of the lag in putting these reports together (the NHTSA reports above are of 2024 traffic crashes, not 2025), we didn’t see all the patterns immediately. I was posting that in 2022, not 2021.
In any case, yes, even with seatbelts and airbags, yes, speed kills.
Related Links
Jan 2026: Dropping Numbers: Drugs ODs, Homicides, Motor Vehicle Accident Deaths
Jun 2023: U.S. Motor Vehicle Accident Deaths: Seasonal Patterns and June 2023 Update
Mar 2022: Motor Vehicle Accident Deaths: High-Level Trends, 1968-2020, Part 1
Mar 2022: Motor Vehicle Accident Deaths, Part 2: Age-Related Trends with Provisional Results in 2021
Mar 2022: Motor Vehicle Accident Deaths, Part 3: Geographical Differences, 2019 vs 2020
May 2017: Mortality Monday: All About Traffic Deaths!
According to AI:
"In the United States, suicide accounts for approximately 15% to 20% of all deaths among young men and boys between the ages of 15 and 34.
... the only cause of death that outnumbers suicide is "unintentional injuries" (which primarily includes accidental drug overdoses and motor vehicle crashes)."
I know I have harped on this before, but deaths from motor vehicle crashes are *never* considered suicides, but rather attributed to speeding, loss of control, or the like.
Yet at least some of them must be suicides.
It is a safe bet that 15%-20% of deaths due to sole-occupant, single vehicle crashes are suicides. It may be difficult to tell which ones are, but to assume that motor vehicles are never a means of suicide seems preposterous.
Meaning the actual suicide rate is bound to be higher than 20%.