Article: Report Makes A Case for Raising Driving Age
- From: jasoninreno82@xxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 8 Sep 2008 18:45:18 -0700 (PDT)
http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2008/09/08/20080908driving-age0908-ON.html
Sixteen-year-old drivers are the most likely to crash, so raising the
age at which teens could get their license would save many lives, a
report from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety says.
Currently, the age at which teens can drive unsupervised ranges from
14¼ in South Dakota to 17 in New Jersey. Most states allow teens to
drive unsupervised somewhere between 16 and 16½, a standard set at the
beginning of the 20th century, when society was more agrarian, the
report notes.
Some opponents of raising the driving age argue that it would simply
delay deaths among young drivers, because inexperience, not
immaturity, is what leads to their high rate of fatal accidents, says
Adrian Lund, president of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety,
a nonprofit research group funded by U.S. automobile insurance
companies. Lund acknowledges that teasing out the effect of
inexperience from that of immaturity is tricky.
Still, in 2005, about 64 out of every 100,000 16-year-old drivers were
involved in a fatal accident, compared with about 59 out of every
100,000 17-year-old drivers. Those numbers were in a July report to
Congress by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
In their most recent legislative session, lawmakers in Delaware,
Florida, Georgia and Massachusetts introduced bills to raise the
minimum age for licensure to 17. Bills in Illinois and Massachusetts
would have raised it to 18. All failed.
Parents and teens alike tend to want to stick with the status quo,
Lund says.
"Teens themselves have been growing up under a certain set of rules
about when they can get their license," says Lund, who's presenting
the report Tuesday at a meeting of the Governors Highway Safety
Association in Scottsdale. "Parents get tired of being the taxis."
Although his group doesn't lobby, "we do advocate indirectly," Lund
says. "We keep doing studies. Hopefully, policymakers pay attention."
He says research by his organization did help persuade states to
introduce "graduated licensing," which extends the period during which
a teen can drive only with supervision.
"From the state perspective, we think the new report ... is a
conversation starter," says Jonathan Adkins, a spokesman for the
Governors Highway Safety Association. "Some states may want to
consider raising the driving age, but it will be a non-starter in
other states. We think it's worth a dialogue and more research."
.
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