Teen licensing bill deserves a hearing
Commentary by JIM MANION
An Idaho legislator's recent remarks suggest lawmakers may be missing the
forest for the trees on a crucial public safety issue. For all our efforts to ensure that
every child is safe inside our classrooms, he said, we may have ignored what happens to
those children on their way to and from our schools.
He's right.
In this, the generation of the child, we may be guilty of fixing our
financial conscience on causes that have blurred our vision to a bigger problem.
Legislation aimed at improving the way we license teen drivers deserves a
hearing and a floor vote by Idaho lawmakers this year. Designed to reduce teen collisions,
save lives and tackle burgeoning traffic violations, a modest plan presented last year was
turned down in committee on a one-vote margin.
It would have required more adult supervision before a teen could get a
driver's license. Its modest requirements for a clean driving record and sensible
restrictions are similar to new licensing laws that are cutting collisions and producing
safer drivers throughout the country.
Sounds almost too simple.
So why did a legislative committee turn it down last year? And will the
House Transportation Committee exercise that option again this year?
Last year, legislators argued we shaped teen collision statistics
inappropriately to make the problem appear worse than it is. They said the plan was too
complicated, and that they had not heard from their constituents on this important issue.
There was another familiar refrain: rural teens shouldn't have the same rules.
The vote made the legislation go away, but not the problems associated
with the way we license teen drivers.
The issue is rooted in a 1949 licensing model that requires just 30 hours
of classroom instruction and a paltry 6 hours of behind-the-wheel training before teens
can get a license. Until recently, that model was a foundation for virtually every states'
licensing laws, but irrefutable data about teen over-involvement in crashes has caused 36
states to enact graduated driver licensing laws. Idaho has not. Our highways, city streets
and rural back roads have become a war zone, littered with 500 teen deaths in just the
past 10 years.
While legislators were solving other problems, Idaho teen drivers,
representing just 9 percent of all licensed drivers in the state, were racking up 21
percent of the fatalities, 21 percent of the injury collisions, 20 percent of the
citations and 12 percent of the alcohol-involved collisions. No other age group, including
seniors, even comes close to the 21,000 Basic Rule citations issued to teens in Idaho in
1998. (A Basic Rule citation refers to an Idaho law applying to driving in a manner
consistent with road conditions.)
Many teens are responsible, proficient drivers, but they are more
apt to take risks like one last year where a skateboarder was killed while car surfing
behind another teen's vehicle. Or like the horrific eastern Idaho collision in February of
1999 where a car was broadsided, killing a 15-year-old female and injuring five others.
An eerie, unsettling silence fell over a Twin Falls junior high school
audience last May when an Idaho AAA employee called out the name of a poster contest
winner. In a sickly, ironic twist, the 14-year-old student, who was to have received an
award for his traffic safety poster, was not present. He and two other teens had died a
few weeks earlier in a single car rollover.
Investigating officers estimated the car's teen driver may have been
traveling at speeds up to 100 miles an hour before it flipped in the rural barrowpit.
This legislation has been overwhelmingly endorsed by Idaho's driver
training educators. It is supported by insurance companies, law enforcement agencies and
the county sheriffs responsible for issuing licenses. It was crafted with approval and
support of the Driver Services Division of the Idaho Transportation Department. And a
November 1999 survey mailed to 900 Idahoans indicates that nine out of 10 respondents
support and would vote for such legislation.
The question is, will legislators again turn a blind eye to one of this
state's most obvious public safety issues?
Jim Manion of Boise is president of AAA’s Idaho division.
