| METRO NEWS | TODAY • November 15, 2000 |
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Joey Ledford - Staff
Wednesday, November 15, 2000
It's been four years since Lavonne Burch lost a daughter in a notorious crash that led to tougher teen driving laws in Georgia.
Now, with Jadie Burch's younger sister Shea old enough to drive, Burch faces the same fears again.
"It kills me every day that Jadie got killed, but she lived her life to the fullest," said Burch, who is working to build a teen center to be called "Jadie's Place" in her daughter's memory. Jadie was one of three 15-year-old students from Cobb County's Sprayberry High School killed in a 1996 crash when a Halloween prank went awry.
Burch advocates more parental responsibility when it comes to teen drivers, and she feels metro Atlanta parents are beginning to tune in. But state lawmakers also are looking at toughening Georgia's teen driving laws.
State Sen. Phil Gingrey (R-Marietta), who has become a leader in the teen driving arena, said Tuesday he has met with both Lt. Gov. Mark Taylor and Gov. Roy Barnes and hopes for a bipartisan teen driving bill.
"The last meeting I had with Mark Taylor was very productive and we are pretty much on the same page on going forward with a bill," said Gingrey. Barnes, however, was noncommittal.
"I guess he's planning on coming up with his own bill," Gingrey said of the governor, who is on the record as supporting raising the driving age and mandatory driver's education, though not in public schools. "That's politics and I understand that."
Gingrey said his bill likely will include a tougher nighttime curfew for the youngest licensed drivers --- either 11 p.m. or midnight. It is currently 1 a.m.
"The lieutenant governor is concerned about (high school) ball games in South Georgia that might run late, so 12 might be more salable than 11," he said.
He said there is also support for requiring a driving log in which a parent will attest that a teen with a learner's permit has gotten at least 40 hours of driving experience, including at least 10 hours at night.
The bill also is likely to include a provision limiting young drivers to one teenage passenger who is not a family member. The Georgia law currently allows three, and, according to Allan Williams, senior vice president of the Insurance Institute of Highway Safety, that and the 1 a.m. curfew are "significant weaknesses."
"With three or more passengers, the risks, according to studies, is four or five times as great than it is driving alone," said Williams. "And when you consider the risk when driving alone is already a lot higher than for adult drivers, it hikes it up pretty well."
California, said Williams, allows no teen passengers for young drivers during their first six months on the road unless there's an adult present. "They have seen a 25 percent reduction in teenagers being injured in cars being driven by 16-year-olds in the first year of driving," he said.
Stricter night curfews, which have been in place in New York and Pennsylvania for many years, reduce night crashes by 50 to 60 percent, Williams said.
Also on the table, said Gingrey, are whether to mandate driver's education and whether to raise the driving age to 17 or even 18.
Meanwhile, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration plans a regional conference on youth highway fatalities for Dec. 6-8 at the downtown Hilton.
"It's going to be a pretty powerful meeting," said Gary Butler, Georgia program manager for the federal highway safety agency. "It's really for decision makers, not kids per se."
Legislators, educators, law enforcement officers, safety officials, driver's education instructors, health officials, attorneys, judges and insurance company representatives will be among those invited to attend, said Butler.
Among the topics to be covered at the NHTSA conference is "remaking driver's ed," said Butler.
"There are ways of getting traffic safety into the (school) curriculum other than driver's education," said Butler. "For example, in the science curriculum, you could study the physics of crashes.
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