S.C. still not requiring enough of teen drivers

SOUTH CAROLINA has slowly been coming to terms with the fact that handing over the car keys does not magically transform a hormonally charged 15- or 16-year-old into a safe driver. And it’s paying off: The number of teens who cause fatal crashes has dropped slightly each year since we started requiring them to get a little maturity and experience before we let them loose on the highway.

But a study released earlier this month shows that we could — and should — do more to make our highways safer for teen drivers and everybody else.

The study found that states with strict “graduated licensing” laws reduced the incidence of fatal wrecks involving 16-year-old drivers by 21 percent. States with moderately tough laws reduced fatalities by 18 percent.

South Carolina has a graduated licensing law, but it isn’t very strict. We fall in a category of states that showed no statistically significant improvement. That means our reduction — from 148 teens who caused fatal crashes in 2002 to 135 in 2005 — could be a fluke.

Graduated licensing laws tie driving privileges not just to maturity (through age restrictions) but also to experience: Delay unsupervised driving in high-risk situations (at night or when friends are in the car) until kids have driven a while under controlled and safer conditions. We don’t plunk a child down in a calculus class when she hasn’t had algebra; why would we expect good results when we try that with driving?

But we didn’t know which restrictions worked best. So researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health examined seven elements of graduated licensing programs. They found that at least five elements were needed for significant improvement.

Technically, South Carolina gets credit for all four of the most effective elements: a three-month waiting period before trading in a learner’s permit for an intermediate license, at least 30 hours of supervised driving with an experienced adult driver, and restrictions on nighttime driving and the number of teen passengers. Technically, because the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety says young drivers shouldn’t drive after 10 p.m.; we let them drive until midnight, as long as there’s a 21-year-old in the car; the institute says they shouldn’t have any teenage passengers, or at most one; we allow two — and an unlimited number if they’re relatives or friends on the way to or from school.

Worse, the more traditional, age-based elements are set too low. Researchers found that the laws that save lives require kids to wait until they’re 15½ for a beginner’s permit, 16 for an intermediate license and 17 for an unrestricted, adult license. We allow all three of those steps six months too early.

Our law is much better than a decade ago, when we let 15-year-olds drive alone during the day after holding a beginner’s permit for a mere seven days, and we let 16-year-olds drive alone at night. But it’s still not what it should be, and so teenagers, who constitute less than 7 percent of licensed drivers, cause 9.3 percent of fatal wrecks and 12.4 percent of all wrecks. More often than not, their victims are either themselves or their friends.

It’s time to take the next step, by putting some real restrictions on night driving and teen passengers, and delaying driving just a few more months.

Traffic wrecks don’t have to be the leading cause of death for teenagers. But they will be until we get serious about making sure kids are mature and experienced enough to have full access to one of the most lethal weapons in our society: the family car.