TEEN DRIVING: Barnes sticks with restrictions
Town meeting: Choose 'between inconvenience and whether that child stays alive,' he says.
Gary Hendricks - Staff
Monday, January 15, 2001

Gov. Roy Barnes stuck to his guns Sunday on his teenaged driving proposals at a televised town hall meeting, then departed early and left parents and kids still debating.

Barnes acknowledged that further restrictions on teen drivers would inconvenience them and parents who must drive when they can't.

"Choosing between inconvenience and whether that child stays alive, I'll choose inconvenience," the governor said.

Barnes appeared in a town hall debate on WSB-TV in Atlanta but left before the telecast ended for another commitment.

Barnes has proposed raising the legal driving age to 17 in metro Atlanta.

He also is backing a no-exception 10 p.m.-6 a.m. curfew and a limit of one non-adult passenger for 16- and 17-year-olds.

"Everybody is talking about age, but nobody's talking about maturity," Cobb County's McEachern High School freshman Beth Morris said after the broadcast. "I know 12-year-olds who are more mature than some 20-year-olds."

But her mother, Debbie Morris, insisted that something has to be done and she will require Beth "to prove to me you can drive a car."

Pro and con opinions were expressed on the broadcast by teens, parents, educators, politicians and in emotional vignettes from those who had lost family and friends.