Clock ticks for lawmakers to decide which road to take on teen driving
Kathey Pruitt and Mark Bixler - Staff
Wednesday, March 21, 2001

Amy Honts didn't need state lawmakers to tell her she wasn't ready to navigate metro Atlanta's busy streets.

After moving here from Nebraska with a 2-month-old driver's license and parents who impose their own restrictions, the 16-year-old knows her limitations. And she's not upset lawmakers may further rein in her driving privileges today as they decide which --- if any --- of the proposed teen driving curbs to adopt before adjourning for the year.

"I won't go on the interstates, not anywhere close to them," the petite North Cobb High School sophomore said. "I'm scared of the traffic. I think we need more time to learn to drive with our parents."

But for many parents and teenagers who have waited for months as lawmakers argue over raising the driving age in metro Atlanta, restricting teen driving hours and setting passenger limits statewide, the picture is far less clear.

On Tuesday, Gov. Roy Barnes, backed by about 40 teenagers and their parents, made a last-minute push for his controversial no-drive zone for unsupervised 16-year-olds in Cobb, DeKalb, Fulton and Gwinnett counties --- a law he says is his top priority as the session draws to a close.

"I've found many of the arguments against it to be just simply ludicrous," Barnes said during a Capitol news conference. Regardless of the outcome, he promised "to push over the next few years to increase the driving age (to 17) statewide, because I believe it needs to be done."

Most parents seem to agree that something must be done to help reduce the growing number of teens killed in car crashes. Yet, the array of provisions, which have changed almost daily since lawmakers started this year's crusade against teen driving deaths, is confusing.

Some parents think the state should provide more driver's education before turning teens loose on the highway. Others think the state is going too far, punishing responsible teens and usurping parents' decision-making authority.

"I don't know that there is a 'good law' that will cover everybody," said Becky Bailey. She said she has thought almost constantly about teen driving in the seven months since her 16-year-old son was killed in a north Fulton County crash while riding with another teenager. "I wish there was a law that would teach us all responsibility, but that's not going to happen."

Just what may emerge today is still uncertain as lawmakers take the teen driving debate down to the final hours of the 2001 session..

House leaders, including Speaker Tom Murphy, have resolutely fought attempts to raise the driving age anywhere in Georgia or to impose stricter driving curfews and passenger restrictions, which they say would punish good drivers with negligent ones.

They promise to battle that provision until the bitter end, which could be close to midnight as House and Senate negotiators try to hammer out a compromise.

"Unless we have a longer training period and driver's education back in the schools, we're just wasting our time," said House Motor Vehicles Committee chairman Bobby Parham (D-Milledgeville). "What we're asking in the law is what every good parent ought to be doing already."

George Komer of northeast Cobb believes he is that textbook parent.

His 18-year-old daughter, Ashley, had to log more than a thousand miles driving with her parents before earning even limited solo driving privileges. She still has to abide by family driving curfews and passenger limits, and "do the embarrassing thing": call her parents to tell them where she is and when she's headed home.

A Senate package of tougher teen driving curfews --- midnight or 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. --- statewide and a one-passenger limit for drivers under 18 have Komer's seal of approval.

But he worries that Barnes' proposed two-tiered driving age takes away too much parental authority and gives his youngest daughter, Tessa, less freedom than teenagers a few houses down the street in Cherokee County.

Under Barnes' plan, 16-year-olds couldn't drive solo in Cobb County, but the roads would be open to them in neighboring Cherokee.

"When she turns 16, I can take her to the end of the street and let her drive away, at 70 miles per hour, up I-75 to Chattanooga," Komer said. "Is that less dangerous than her driving 40 miles an hour to school in Cobb County three miles away?"

That's just one of the questions highway safety experts are trying to address as they analyze legislation that has grown more complex. With every preliminary vote, legislators try to walk the line between what statistics indicate will work and what lawmakers are willing to pass.

The answers, according to Rob Foss, a senior researcher at the University of North Carolina's highway safety research center, may be disappointing to those who had hoped to make a major dent in the number of teen deaths on Georgia's highways each year.

"It sounds like most of the good things have kind of slipped away," Foss said. "Unfortunately, in trying not to interfere with the lives of teenagers, they continue to put the lives of teens at what we know are the greatest possible risks."

Worried that school and other events in rural parts of the state are too far-flung to force young drivers to be home before midnight, state representatives shortened a proposed 10 p.m.-6 a.m. curfew for 16-year-olds to midnight-6 a.m. They also further weakened the restriction with numerous exceptions for work-, school- or church-related trips, even though safety experts say about 80 percent of nighttime teen driving crashes occur between 9 p.m. and midnight.

To protect what one lawmaker called the "American institution" of double-dating and to add a chaperonelike damper to young romance, legislators decided to increase the passenger limit to three, even though statistics show a carload of teens can increase the accident risk by up to 200 percent.

Even Barnes, a governor accustomed to getting what he asks from lawmakers, had to compromise, scaling down the initial 18-county no-drive zone --- first to five counties, then to four after the House rejected the idea entirely.

Some lawmakers are still skeptical about enacting a law that concentrates on metro Atlanta, when the highest rate of teen driving accidents is in rural parts of the state. None of the four counties in the proposed no-drive zone ranks higher than 130th out of 159 counties when it comes to the rate of fatal teen driving accidents per 1,000 residents.

But in an atmosphere where every wreck involving a teenager makes headlines in metro Atlanta, lawmakers say they have to try something --- no matter how incremental --- to tackle the problem. In town hall meetings across the region, parents cited the high-profile deaths as they called for action to make teens safer on the road.

Perhaps nowhere was the link between real life and legislative action more clear than when Barnes unveiled the first details of his plan for tougher teen driving laws. His call, issued to hundreds of business leaders and legislators, came just hours after a Dunwoody 16-year-old died in his father's Jaguar on the way back from a video store.

As Barnes pushes hard for his proposals, Senate advocates take some comfort in knowing their plan to require 40 hours of driving instruction is relatively unopposed and that lawmakers expect to fund tougher, on-road driving tests that parents, like Bailey, support.

"I'd like for it to be done in one fell swoop, right now, and save the maximum number of lives," said Sen. Phil Gingrey (R-Marietta), one of the Senate bill's sponsors, "but I understand the reality of the political process."

That reality frustrates parents hoping to spare others the grief they've experienced. At a recent committee hearing, Mark Boudreau of Covington told lawmakers about his stepdaughter, April Ledford, "a kid with dreams" of becoming a flight attendant. Her dreams were cut short in a fatal lunch-time crash as she rode with friends to Burger King.

Boudreau pushed for driver's education and more requirements --- like good grades --- for young drivers to keep a license. But he left the Capitol frustrated by a herky-jerky legislative process he found hard to track.

"You can't please all the people all the time, and I think that's what they're trying to do," Boudreau said Tuesday. "The cogs of democracy turn slowly. How do I feel about it? I think it sucks."