| GWINNETT | TODAY • September 21, 2000 |
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Jim Galloway - Staff
Thursday, September 21, 2000
An old saw dictates that if you see a cow jump over the henhouse, you don't ask why it didn't leap over the barn instead. You appreciate the small miracles for what they are.
September is nearly done, and already the groundwork is being laid for the 2001 session of the Legislature in January.
State Sen. Phil Gingrey, who represents my part of Cobb County, is filling up his calendar. He's got an appointment with Lt. Gov. Mark Taylor. He's trying for meetings with Gov. Roy Barnes and House Speaker Tom Murphy.
Gingrey has in his hand another draft of a teen-driving bill. Last year, the Republican lost an effort to raise the age for a driver's license to 17.
Conversations with the governor, the speaker and the lieutenant governor --- all Democrats --- will determine Gingrey's strategy for this year. Whether he'll try to prod the cow over the henhouse, or point her toward the barn. Right now, he's thinking henhouse.
Unless a Democrat signals encouragement, Gingrey's bill won't challenge the right of a 16-year-old to get behind the wheel.
Gingrey will instead focus on two other weaknesses in state law. A teen driver can have up to three unrelated teenage passengers. Strong evidence links car accidents, fatal and nonfatal, to the number of teenagers in a car.
For 16-year-old drivers only, Gingrey's bill would allow only one unrelated teenage passenger. He would also tighten the curfew, which is now 1 a.m. to 5 a.m. He'd make it 11 p.m. to 6 a.m., but again the tightening would apply only to 16-year-olds.
Gingrey's most interesting proposal is to demand that 16-year-olds document 40 hours of supervised driving, six of those hours at night, before they are issued a license. Parents would be required to sign an affidavit. The state senator admits that he's drawn some skeptical reaction. "I'm told, 'People will lie about that, Phil,' " he said.
And maybe some parents would. But it would at least make Mom and Dad partly responsible for expertise of the youngster they set loose on the road.
Gingrey can tell you more about the topic today at a 4 p.m. meeting of the Neighborhood Safety Commission. It's on the third floor of the Cobb County government building off the Marietta Square.
The politics of teen driving are delicate and frustrating. We're told that rural legislators oppose raising the age for a driver's license --- that the farmlands of Georgia shouldn't have to pay for the sins of suburbia. Never mind that more than half of Georgia's population is now suburban, whether Atlanta, Macon, Columbus, Augusta or Savannah.
More telling is Gingrey's proposal to require 16-year-olds to certify their day and night driving experience.
Gingrey would like to make driver's ed a required part of school curriculum. But the governor's education reform efforts are eating up every bit of classroom time. And local school systems, suspicious that Barnes' reforms carry hidden costs, aren't looking for more ways to spend money.
School systems could offer mandatory after-school programs, similar to what Marietta and Cobb County now offer voluntarily, and ask the students to pay the cost. But that's opposed by legislators who represent the state's poorer districts.
Even when offered, driver's ed courses aren't much to talk about --- 30 hours of classroom instruction and six hours of actual driving. None of it at night. "Parents are thinking Johnny got an 'A' in driver's ed, so he's fine," Gingrey said. It's an illusion, but tougher standards --- such as mandatory night driving --- would add to the cost and generate opposition.
So we must settle for the henhouse. But we should look for other approaches, too. Here's one: What's to keep the Legislature from imposing a limit on the parking spaces for students at state-funded high schools?
Our Cobb columnist
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