By Randy Dotinga
HealthSCOUT
Reporter
WEDNESDAY, Sept. 20 (HealthSCOUT) -- If you want your teen-ager to keep his or her eye on the road, keep the passenger seat free and clear.
That's the message from new research that shows accident rates dropped after California banned rookie drivers from carrying young passengers.
Death and injury rates for teen-age passengers in the state fell by 21 percent from the first 11 months of 1998 to the same time period in 1999, according to a study by the Automobile Club of Southern California. Other accident rates were unchanged, the club says.
In January of 1999, California began giving out provisional driver's licenses to 16-year-olds that outlaw them from carrying passengers younger than 20. The restriction lasts for six months. The only exception is if a licensed driver older than 25 is in the car.
"We all tend to be distracted too much when we drive," says Steve Bloch, a senior researcher with the auto club. "When the goal is to get lots of your friends in the car and drive around and have fun, it's a swell thing -- but not when you're first starting to drive."
Besides the drop in teen-age passenger deaths, which fell from 2,045 in 1998 to 1,608 in 1999, the auto club also reported that 16-year-old drivers caused fewer crashes resulting in injuries or death. Those accidents fell by 20 percent, from 3,817 to 3,066, the report says.
By contrast, the number of crashes caused by 18-year-old drivers rose by 6 percent, from 5,871 to 6,212 -- and that's a sign that the decrease in accidents among 16-year-olds was not an anomaly, Bloch says.
The new report confirms existing research that shows passengers in the cars of teen-age drivers pose a major safety risk, says Julie Rochman, spokeswoman for the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.
"Seat belts come off, travel speeds go up, the radio goes way up, the passengers either intentionally or unintentionally distract the driver," she says. "The driver wants to show off and starts playing games in the vehicle, passing inappropriately, speeding, tailgating."
To make things worse, she says, teen-age drivers don't have the experience or maturity to handle hazards. "It's a pattern we see repeated again and again and again," Rochman says.
Earlier this year, a study by the Insurance Institute and the Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health found that a 16-year-old driver's risk of dying behind the wheel rose by 40 percent with one passenger on board.
The risk of death doubled with two passengers and went up nearly three-fold with three passengers, the study says. Risks were even higher for 17-year-old drivers.
What's needed, says the Insurance Institute, are more restrictions on teen drivers.
California has one of the nation's strictest limitations on passengers. Some states have no restrictions, while other states ban young passengers or limit the number of passengers during the first months that a teen-ager drives.
Currently, 10 states have some type of passenger restriction on teen-age drivers, according to the Insurance Institute: California, Delaware, Georgia, Indiana, Maine, Massachusetts, New Mexico, Oregon, Tennessee and Vermont. Washington, D.C., also has a passenger restriction.
Four other states -- New Jersey, Wyoming, Wisconsin and Washington -- have passenger-restriction laws that will take effect in 2001.
These restrictions are part of "graduated driver's licensing" systems that ease young drivers into the responsibilities of the road, Rochman says.
"It gets at two underlying risk factors -- inexperience and immaturity -- by keeping new drivers in the licensing system longer, allowing them to age and mature," she says. "It allows them to gain experience in low-risk settings before they get their full and unrestricted licenses."
California, for instance, has three levels for rookie drivers: a learning stage, an intermediate stage (with the passenger restrictions and a nighttime curfew) and the full stage, when young drivers have all the rights of other drivers.
Three-level graduated licensing systems now exist in 31 states and the District of Columbia.
The ideal licensing system, according to the Insurance Institute, allows learner's permits no earlier than age 16 and requires parents to certify that a beginning driver has 30 to 50 hours of supervised learning over a six-month period.
Some states currently allow teen-agers to begin driving as young as 14.
After the learning period, the Insurance Institute recommends that provisional licenses stay in effect until age 18. The provisional licenses should have a nighttime curfew that bans driving after 9 p.m. or 10 p.m., and the number of passengers should be limited, the institute advises.
What To Do
If your state doesn't ban rookie drivers from carrying passengers, you might want to use your own powers of persuasion to convince your teen-ager to drive alone. Or, if other young people are going to be in the car, consider tagging along yourself or look for a responsible young adult to serve as a chaperone.
To learn about any restrictions on teen drivers in your state, check out information compiled by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. (You'll need Adobe Acrobat installed on your computer to read the information, but you can install it free through this site.)
If you live in California, a primer on the state's complex teen-age driving laws is available from the Automobile Club of Southern California online.
Or, you may want to read previous HealthSCOUT articles on teen drivers.