| METRO NEWS | TODAY • September 26, 2000 |
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TEEN DRIVING DILEMMA
Jack Warner - Staff
Tuesday, September 26, 2000
No matter how hard metro Atlanta's state lawmakers push to increase restrictions on teen drivers, key legislators say it's not likely to happen.
There is too wide a gap between the desire to cut down on teenage highway deaths in urban areas and the needs of teenagers in rural areas, lawmakers said Monday.
Even Sen. Steve Thompson (D-Cobb County), who co-sponsored a bill to raise the driving age last year, said rural areas "have a different set of circumstances and different requirements. I'm not sure how we're going to address that."
Gov. Roy Barnes said Monday through a spokeswoman that he would again support legislation to raise the legal driving age from 16 to 17, as he did last year.
But House Speaker Tom Murphy (D-Bremen) said he didn't think the deaths of 16 young people this year in metro Atlanta accidents involving 16-year-old drivers would change many opinions in the Legislature.
"Do you punish all the good teenagers who don't drive fast?" he asked. "Everybody's responsible for their own driving. I'd say 99.9 percent or more of your teenagers are good drivers. I don't feel like we can punish all the teenagers. I don't know the answer. I wish I did.
"There might be some incentive to put some limits on the times they can drive," Murphy suggested.
That isn't likely to fly either, other legislators said.
Sen. Jack Hill (D-Reidsville), a rural lawmaker who has been working to solve the teen driver problem, said curfews are "a real issue in rural Georgia. Distances and times of day get to be a problem with kids returning home from ball games" in the country, where an away game can be an hour's drive or more.
"It's so tragic when kids lose their lives in accidents," Hill said. "At some point parents have to take some responsibilities for putting values into kid's minds. You won't prevent some of these accidents until you can instill some fear and caution into young drivers."
Both Hill and Thompson said requiring more training might be the most palatable avenue for urban and rural Georgians.
"Last year I proposed an initiative to require driver training in order to get a license at 16; without it you'd have to wait until 17," Hill said. "But there wasn't much interest in it."
Thompson said few high schools in Georgia now offer a driver education class, but he pointed to a Marietta school system course offered to students for $157. "We definitely need to address the mandatory hours of training," he said.
Curfews are not the only restriction that causes problems for many kids and parents, Hill said.
"I proposed limiting the passengers to one in cars driven by 16-year-olds," he said. "Some parents objected to that because at this age they want their daughters to be double-dating and not going out with a boy alone."
Additionally, Hill said curfews and curbs on numbers of passengers and their ages are rarely enforced.
"You don't know how old a driver is until you stop the car," he pointed out.
Hill said he would like to see a committee study restrictions on teen drivers the Legislature made in the 1990s.
The action gave courts authority to suspend the licenses of drivers younger
than 21 for one serious infraction. "Look at the numbers and see if any part of
it appears to be working." he said.