KEY POINTS:
Jenny Williams laughingly lays claim to being a "ladette" - one of the rising number of risk-taking teenage girls who play the boys at their own game.
The 16-year-old excels in sport, representing Auckland in under-17 and under-19 softball.
Her Metro premier squad teammate Janelle Nee jokes that Jenny is healthy "four days a week", implying that weekends are the exception.
And figures released this week reveal Jenny is not alone.
Statistics NZ life expectancy data suggests the ladette lifestyle is taking a toll on teenage girls.
Overall, New Zealanders are living longer - but the one group going against this trend is 15- to 19-year-old girls.
Weekend Herald research shows that as well as having an increased death rate, more in this group are being arrested and landing in hospital, - suggesting a risk-taking attitude.
Behind the wheel of her Mitsubishi Legnum, Jenny admits she is sometimes tempted to put her foot down.
"It's just what we do, what young people do," she said of the ladette life.
At 25, Janelle Nee agrees with her teammate that she and many others pushed the boundaries in their teens.
But, she says, the behaviour is now more extreme.
"It's starting earlier. You can drink when you're in high school. That's ridiculous - you shouldn't be able to drink when you're still in 7th form."
Between 2005 and last year, while every other group gained in life expectancy, teenage girls went backwards, their death rate increasing slightly.
Their most common causes of death last year were accidents, violence and poisoning, said the Health Information Service.
The numbers are small - 186 died between 2005 and last year, compared to 157 between 2000 and 2002 - and Ministry of Health public health director Dr Mark Jacobs warns about jumping to conclusions.
But he says things such as increasing drinking among the group could be leading to more unsafe behaviour.
The Ministry of Transport says the number of girls in their late teens dying on the roads is increasing.
Between 2005 and last year, 58 girls in the 15-19 age group died in crashes, up from 49 between 2000 and 2002.
That 18.4 per cent rise occurred at the same time as the overall road toll dropped more than 7 per cent.
Auckland City Hospital has had a 25 per cent increase in the number of teenage girls admitted to its emergency department - 2106 last year compared to 1686 in 2002.
Police in Auckland say the number of girls aged 15 to 19 arrested or detained has risen 29 per cent since the 2003-04 year, compared to a 4 per cent rise for boys in the same age group.
But overall, boys outnumber girls more than four to one in the latest police figures.
Police say breaches of the liquor bans introduced in parts of Auckland City during the period have probably contributed to the rises.
But the statistics are not keeping Jenny awake at night - she is too busy living life.
"I definitely don't think about dying," she says.
