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LOS
ANGELES--Oct. 6, 2005--New changes to
California's teen driving law will help protect
more teens from vehicle crash injuries and
fatalities, according to research from the
Automobile Club of Southern California.
AB 1474 by Assemblyman Bill Maze, R-Visalia, was
recently signed into law by Gov. Arnold
Schwarzenegger. As of Jan. 1, 2006, it requires
teen drivers to have their license for one year
before being allowed to drive between 11 p.m.
and 5 a.m., or before being allowed to transport
young passengers without an adult in the car.
Previously, teen drivers were prohibited from
driving between midnight and 5 a.m. for one year
and could not transport young passengers without
an adult in the car for the first six months
after obtaining a license.
Teens who received
their licenses before Jan. 1 2006 will still have to
follow the new law if their licenses are less
than one year old.
Assemblyman Maze said AB 1474 will make
important improvements to the current teen
driving law. "These changes are well-founded in
research and will cause only a minor
inconvenience to teens and parents all while
helping to reduce accidents and save lives,"
Maze said.
An Auto Club analysis of teen crash statistics
shows that the changes should further reduce
teen crash deaths and injuries which have
already been significantly reduced by the
existing Graduated Driver's License (GDL) law
for teens. The original law was passed in 1997
to give teens more experience behind the wheel
before they tackle complex driving situations,
because vehicle crashes are the primary cause of
death for teens and crash statistics show that
teen drivers are among the most dangerous on the
road.
"The number of crashes involving California's
16-year-old drivers between 11 p.m. and midnight
is nearly 13 percent higher than we would expect
when we take into account the amount of driving
they do at that hour," said Steven Bloch, Ph.D.,
the Auto Club's senior research associate who
analyzed the California teen crash data.
"Because this hour-long period is so risky for
teen drivers, extending the driving limit to 11
p.m. will save lives and prevent dangerous
crashes," Bloch added.
Lengthening the time of passenger limitation for
young drivers also should help reduce crashes. A
study of the California GDL law and its effect
on teen crash rates estimated that the passenger
restriction in the law prevented nearly 700
deaths and injuries statewide in the first three
years after GDL took effect. This was because
the number of teenage passengers carried by
16-year-old drivers declined by an estimated 25
percent after the law took effect, according to
the study. The same study showed that teen
drivers with passengers were significantly more
at risk of causing a crash than solo teen
drivers.
An analysis by the Traffic Injury Research
Foundation of teen crash rates indicates that
the injury crash risk to both teen drivers and
underage passengers significantly declines each
month after licensing, then stabilizes a little
more than one year after drivers first receive
their licenses.
"Extending the passenger limit of the GDL law
from six months to one year will help reduce
injuries and deaths from teen crashes both by
reducing the number of distractions for novice
drivers and the number of potential crash
victims," Bloch said.
Teen drivers with less than one year of
experience may still carry passengers under age
20 as long as there is an adult 25 or older in
the vehicle. Young family members can also be
transported without having an adult in the car.
The 11 p.m. driving curfew also contains
exceptions for work and school attendance.
All the provisions of the GDL law are enforced
as secondary violations - that is, a law
enforcement officer must first pull over a
driver for another possible infraction before
the driver will be cited for a violation of the
GDL law.
Bloch said the Auto Club encourages parents to
discuss the new changes in the law with their
teens and emphasize that the changes will enable
them to become better drivers while reducing
their exposure to risky driving situations that
they might not be ready to handle.
In 1997, California was the first state to pass
a Graduated Driver's License law that included a
passenger limit for teen drivers, and the law
took effect in July 1998. In the first two years
after passage of the law, teen passengers killed
and injured in crashes involving 16-year-old
drivers decreased by 40 percent.
Besides California, 48 other states and the
District of Columbia have approved some form of
teen driving restriction. The Insurance
Institute for Highway Safety has ranked
California's GDL law as the most comprehensive
in the nation.
The Auto Club sponsored SB 1329, the original
GDL law, and strongly supported the enhancements
to the law contained in AB 1474. |
Parental
rules linked to safer teen driving