Older drivers have been targeted by legislators who want to restrict the wheel time of grandma and grandpa, but insurance industry statistics make a compelling case: if states want to make roads safer, they should find a way to improve the performance of young male drivers. It’s abysmal.

Fatal accidents nationwide increased 1 percent in 1994, to 40,676. The groups with the highest motor vehicle death rates (more than 40 per 100,000 population) were males 16 to 24 years old and over the age of 80. But as one insurance industry group observed, “this is where the comparison ends.”

Crash statistics work against the elderly because they’re physically fragile — aged bones and physique are a liability in a collision. Approximately one death in three of 16- to 19-year-olds is in a car wreck, compared with just 1 percent of the deaths in the over-65 population.

Meanwhile, stacking the odds against young drivers is the number of miles they’re behind the wheel, inexperience, and how too many of them drive, hard. Also critical is who they’re traveling with, their peers. Two out of three teen-age passenger deaths occur when another teen is driving.

It may help explain a possibly related trend, the death rate in light pickup and utility vehicles, which increased 78 percent between 1975 and 1993, while their popularity doubled.

Lawmakers have an important, but finite capacity to make highways safer by improving the caliber of drivers. States can continue to improve driver education and testing. They can raise the age limit before licenses are issued to young motorists. They can revoke the licenses of elderly drivers who have demonstrated loss of competence behind the wheel, or whose vision or physical condition fail to meet basic standards.

The trend today among legislators is to focus on older drivers. While lawmakers are justified in scrutinizing the performance of the gray heads over the dashboard, they should proceed with caution. It is easy to be distracted from the actual source of most tragedy on the highways.

According to the Insurance for Highway Safety, “When driver involvement in fatal crashes is considered, it’s clear that teen-agers are by far the biggest problem.”

That’s where most of the concern, emphasis and vigilance should continue to be placed.