Tighter Rules Sought On Teenage Drivers
-
- May
- 6
Assemblywoman Sandy Galef, D-0ssining, and Sen. Vincent Leibell, R-Patterson, Putnam County, have a bill in the state Legislature that would stiffen requirements for teenage drivers, including limiting the number of teens allowed in vehicles with young drivers.
The measure would ban inexperienced drivers with less than six months with a license from having other teenagers in the car, unless accompanied by a licensed driver age 21 or older.
State law no
w limits teen drivers to two passengers under 21 per car unless supervis
ed by someone over 21. But AAA and other groups have urged that the law is insufficient because teenage drivers become distracted with friends in the car.
The measure would also increase the number of required supervised driving hours from 20 to 50 for young drivers with a learners’ permits.
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on Tuesday, May 6th, 2008 at 1:35 pm by Joseph Spector.
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Jay Gallagher has covered Albany for Gannett News Service since 1984 and has been Albany Bureau chief since 1989. He`s a native of the Boston area and likes to point out that in this millennium, the score is Red Sox 1 championship, the Yankees 0. 
Cara Matthews has been a statehouse correspondent in the Albany Bureau since August 2005. Prior to that, she covered Putnam County government and politics at The Journal News for nearly five years. Before that, she worked at newspapers in Connecticut and covered the state Legislature for one of them. 
maybe if the exam to get a license was more than a 20 min multiple choice test or if the “road test” involved more than a 15 min drive around the block then we could actually encourage people to, you know, learn how to drive.
shouldn’t we be looking at ways to improve the quality of ALL drivers on the road rather than make laws that persecute young people and reduce their opportunities to gain valuable driving experience.
the bottom line is if you want better, safer drivers on the road you dont just ban kids. you make a system that actually teaches and then tests for those skills.
in ireland they have separate automatic and manual transmission licenses and road tests. also their road tests are about 2 hours long and test a variety of skills. this, along with other measures have led to a substantial reduction in road fatalities.
young drivers, while generally less experienced, aren’t the only kinds of problem drivers on the road. we need to fix the route cause. we need better system of licensing and testing. perhaps even with periodic “re-examinations” of drivers. especially for the elderly.
but kids dont vote. so let’s just legislate against them and wash our hands and say we’ve done something.
thanks.