House panel retools teen driving bill
2001 GEORGIA LEGISLATURE
Kathey Pruitt - Staff
Wednesday, February 28, 2001

Sixteen-year-olds in four major metro Atlanta counties would have to pass a driver's education course and log 20 hours' driving experience before getting their license, under new teen driving requirements proposed Tuesday by a House committee.

The House Motor Vehicles Committee added the requirement for teens in Cobb, Gwinnett, Fulton and DeKalb counties despite concerns about the lack of school driver's ed courses and objections that low-income families might not be able to afford private courses of $300 or more.

But while they tightened some standards in a teen driving bill that's already cleared the Senate, House leaders relaxed a proposed nighttime driving restriction.

The committee unanimously rolled back the 10 p.m.-6 a.m. driving curfew for 16-year-olds to midnight-6 a.m., making it identical to a proposal for 17-year-olds. And they retooled exemptions to let teen drivers stay on the road past midnight for work-, school- or church-related activities.

The revised Senate Bill 1, which also limits 16- and 17-year-old drivers to a single passenger and requires formal or informal driver instruction, is expected to hit the House for a vote next week.

Tuesday's changes "just totally gut" nighttime driving portions of the bill, said Sen. Phil Gingrey (R-Marietta), a sponsor of the proposal led by Lt. Gov. Mark Taylor and backed by Gov. Roy Barnes.

"When you take the no-drive time from midnight to 6 a.m. and you add back in the exceptions," Gingrey said, "you pretty much don't have a curfew."

Safety experts say keeping teens off the roads during the time they're most likely to be involved in serious accidents is key to limiting teen driving fatalities.

"To be blunt, what they're doing is taking a measure that really would do some good and turning it into one that would do virtually no good," said Rob Foss, senior researcher at the highway safety research center at the University of North Carolina.

But House Motor Vehicles Chairman Bobby Parham (D-Milledgeville) said there was no way to muster support in the House for the 10 p.m. curfew.

Lobbyists for the hospitality industry were among those who pushed for shorter curfews so they won't lose teenage workers.

Practicality might also be a hang-up that kills the driver's ed requirement for the four major metro counties.

Parham said there's not enough slots in school-based or private driver training courses to accommodate the thousands of teens who would need the class to get a license. He projects that a conference committee will "address it properly."

Among the other committee changes to SB 1:

Prohibiting 16-year-old drivers from having any passengers except immediate family for the first 90 days after they get a license.

Delaying the start of mandatory, on-road license tests for an unspecified period that could be as long as a couple of years until money can be budgeted and 50 additional license examiners can be hired and trained.

Starting the process for driver education instructors to administer the license examination for a $50 fee.

Allowing Internet or distance-learning driver's education courses to count toward the mandatory driver instruction required for a license.

Permitting teens to rack up four points against their license (the equivalent of driving 24 miles over the limit) rather than two points as outlined in the original bill before losing their license for six months.