The Licensing Debate

Grim statistics argue for limits on teen drivers

Friday, January 20, 2006
Tim Doulin
The Columbus Dispatch

Shane Brenner was 16 years old when he got a traffic citation for causing a crash.

"It was probably an inexperience thing on my part," said Brenner, 18, now a senior at Bexley High School.

That inexperience is what worries Ohio AAA and others that back state legislation they think will strengthen Ohio’s teen-driving laws.

From 1995 to 2004, there were 1,173 deaths in crashes that involved Ohio drivers 15 to 17 years old, according to a national study released this week by AAA. Ohio is tied for fifth in the nation.

Of those killed, 37 percent were the teenage drivers. About 33 percent were passengers in the teen drivers’ cars.

The remaining dead were drivers or passengers in other vehicles and nonmotorists, including pedestrians and bicyclists.

"The striking thing is that two of every three people killed in teen driver crashes are people other than the teen driver," said Brian Newbacher, spokesman for AAA in Independence, Ohio.

AAA supports proposed changes in the graduated driver-licensing law.

House Bill 343 would raise the minimum age for a permit to 16, up from 15 ½; increase the minimum age for an intermediate license to 16 ½ from 16; allow no more than one nonfamily member in a car driven by someone with an intermediate license; and extend the length of the intermediate license to 18 months, from 12 months.

In 1997, AAA started pushing for graduated driver’s-license laws in every state. Ohio’s took effect in 1999.

The current law prohibits unsupervised driving from 1 a.m. to 5 a.m. until drivers turn 17. The proposed changes would restrict teens from driving unsupervised from midnight to 6 a.m. until they turn 18.

Critics say many of the proposed changes in House Bill 343 were removed from the first bill before it became a law.

Still, numbers showed that teen deaths dropped after the law passed — from 279 in 1997 to 218 in 2000, according to the Ohio Department of Public Safety. Crashes fell 11 percent during the same period.

Nationally, the number of 16-year-old drivers in fatal crashes was 938 in 2003, down from 1,084 in 1993, according to a study by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.

"The data really all still point to graduated licensing reducing teen crashes," said Susan Ferguson, senior vice president of research at the institute.

In Ohio, 16- to 20-year-olds were involved in the highest number of crashes from 2001 to 2003, according to the Ohio Department of Transportation.

The 16- to 20-year-old drivers were at fault in 61 percent of the crashes they were involved with.

Graduated licenses tend to place restrictions — such as on nighttime driving and the number of passengers — to reduce distractions and remove drivers from potentially dangerous situations behind the wheel.

"Really what they need to do is to change their behavior," Ferguson said.

"But it is very difficult to change any driver’s behavior, especially so for teens."

Emily Roth, 17, has been driving for more than a year without incident. She watches her speed, and her parents insist she doesn’t talk on the cell phone while driving.

"I did have my own car," she said. "But my brother totaled it."

tdoulin@dispatch.com