New research suggests that restricting teenagers from driving unsupervised at night could significantly reduce car crashes, HealthDay News reported.

Researchers from Monash University and Harvard Medical School found that driving laws that eliminate or deter unsupervised night driving by people younger than 18 years old achieve substantial reductions in car crashes.

Car crashes are the leading cause of death among people aged between the ages of 15 and 19 years old worldwide. In the United States, where the study was based, teen drivers experience motor vehicle crashes at more than twice the rate of the total population of licensed drivers.

"Young people are strikingly overrepresented in sleep-related crashes. That's because they are more vulnerable than older people to performance impairment as a result of sleep deprivation, particularly during the night time when the biological clock in the brain is signalling sleep," Shantha Rajaratnam, lead author of the study, said in a statement.

For the study, researchers examined the Massachusetts graduated driver licensing program. Designed to allow young drivers younger than 18 years to gain experience before receiving their full license, the program prohibits driving unsupervised at night. It also imposes penalties for those violating the restriction and includes compulsory drowsy driving education programs, Medical Daily reported.

They also looked at police crash records of teenagers one year before and five years after the law's implementation in 2007. Two comparison groups were also evaluated.

They found that crash rates for drivers aged 16-17 fell 19 percent, nighttime crashes for this age group fell by 29 percent, and crashes causing fatal or incapacitating injury fell by 40 per cent.

Researchers suggests that night driving restrictions have a much greater impact when they are accompanied by strict penalties, including enforcing drivers' license suspensions as the penalty for intermediate stage drivers who violate night driving prohibitions, with incremental increases in the duration of the suspension for subsequent violations.

The findings are detailed in the journal Health Affairs.