WASHINGTON — Accidents involving teenage drivers are nearly twice as likely to kill passengers, people in other cars or pedestrians as they are to kill the young drivers, a national report released Wednesday by AAA says.

In Washington state, law-enforcement and AAA officials said the limits on nighttime driving and restrictions on who can be in the car with newly licensed teenagers have helped halve the number of serious-injury accidents involving young drivers.

The state law establishing provisional licenses for new teenage drivers went into effect in July 2001.

Nationally, more than 30,000 people died in wrecks that involved at least one teen driver between 1995 and 2004, according to the AAA report, which analyzed data on fatal accidents from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

"Teen-driver crashes are even more deadly for others than they are for the drivers themselves," said Robert Darbelnet, the auto club's president. "To view teen crashes as a problem only for teens overlooks a specific point: Everyone is at risk."

Automobile accidents are the leading cause of death among teenagers. But passengers in cars driven by teens also are at higher risk, accounting for 32 percent of teen-driver fatalities in the period examined by the report. Drivers between 15 and 17 accounted for 36 percent of the deaths. The remaining 32 percent of fatalities were pedestrians or people in other cars.

Time of day and driver distractions — especially when there are other teenagers in the car — are often associated with accidents involving teen drivers, officials said.

That's why Washington approved the teen-driving restrictions five years ago.

"The provisional-license restrictions remove some big risk factors," said Janet Ray of the Washington chapter of AAA. "Keeping friends out of the car allows a new driver who is still figuring things out to gain very necessary experience behind the wheel without distraction."

To keep the number of crashes down, law-enforcement and traffic officials said they try to educate parents about what teens with provisional licenses are allowed to do and when new drivers gain certain privileges.

For the first six months, provisional-license holders can carry passengers younger than 20 only if they are family members. If the drivers maintain a clean record, after six months they can carry up to three young passengers. That restriction lasts for another six months.

Newly licensed young drivers can hit the road between 1 a.m. and 5 a.m. only when accompanied by a parent, guardian or licensed driver older than 25.

The best way to keep teen drivers safe is for parents to enforce the rules, even though it may be easy to look the other way in the face of pressure from their teenagers, authorities said.

"We need to send a clear message that it's not OK even to let them just take the keys and run to the store or grab their buddies and head for the football game," said Lowell Porter, director of the state Traffic Safety Commission and a former Washington State Patrol chief. "We need to tell them, 'You just can't do that yet.' "

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