AAA proposal strikes unexpected roadblocks

Bill would raise driving age by six months

Tuesday, January 24, 2006
Julie Carr Smyth
Plain Dealer Bureau

Columbus - Legislation to protect teenagers and their potential victims from dying in car accidents might sound like a no-brainer.

But a bill aimed at doing just that has run a coalition of traffic-safety advocates up against those representing an American middle class whose children are increasingly dependent on their cars.

House Bill 343, and a companion Senate proposal being unveiled today, would return Ohio's driving age to 16, a six-month forward shift from current law. It would also impose new restrictions on the hours teens could drive and the number of people they could carry.

AAA spokesman Brian Newbacher, whose organization is spearheading the legislation, makes his case with numbers. The coalition assembled to support the bill includes the State Highway Patrol, the Ohio Insurance Institute, Mothers Against Drunk Driving and the National Safety Council.

"The main point we want to make is that two of three people killed in crashes involving teen drivers are people other than the driver," he said, citing a recently released analysis of government crash statistics by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety.

The study also showed crashes go up as the number of passengers in a teen's vehicle rise, bolstering the plan's restriction of teen drivers to one nonfamily passenger at a time.

State Rep. Bill Seitz, a Cincinnati Republican, questions the numbers - and the need for the bill.

"To say that younger drivers have higher rates of accidents is only to say that new drivers have more accidents than more-experienced ones - which would still be the case whether we moved the driving age to 16, 17 or 18," he said. "My position is very politically unpopular because it's only interesting to those people under 18, and they don't vote."

He noted that Ohio instituted its current driving law only in 1998. The annual percentages of 15-, 16- and 17-year-olds involved in fatal crashes since then have remained virtually unchanged.

Seitz said most teenagers are responsible and that the restrictions contained in the bill would prevent high schoolers from engaging in a host of activities for which they need their cars.

"By limiting the number of passengers they can have in their cars, we're simply putting more teenage drivers on the road," he said. "This would prevent them from carpooling, double dating, and other things of that innocuous nature."

He said teenagers in his native Cincinnati often want to travel to the state football championships, which would put them on the road beyond the midnight curfew laid out in the bill.

AAA's report found that nationally, 30,917 people died in crashes involving 15- to 17-year-old drivers between 1995 and 2004 - and Newbacher said bringing those numbers down is worth the inconvenience that might be caused by the proposal's restrictions.

Billboards promoting passage of the bill are due to go up in Cleveland this week, and a Web site, www.ohioteendriver.org, has been launched.

A floor vote on the House bill could come within the next two weeks.

To reach this Plain Dealer reporter:

jsmyth@plaind.com, 1-800-228-8272