By Rita Rubin, USA TODAY
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 141/4 in South Dakota to 17 in New Jersey. Most states allow teens to drive unsupervised somewhere between 16 and 161/2, a standard set at the beginning of the 20th century, when society was more agrarian, the report notes.
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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 today at a meeting of the Governors Highway Safety Association in Scottsdale, Ariz. "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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