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June 22, 2006

Study: 'Graduated' driving laws for teens help save lives

Teenage driving laws like Rhode Island's that limit nighttime driving and enforce passenger restrictions save lives, according to a study released today by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety.

The study compared crash rates and patterns of teenage drivers in Oregon, which has nighttime and passenger restrictions, with those in Ontario, which does not mandate such restrictions. The study also surveyed a random sample of 1,000 teens -– half of whom had been involved in a car crash and half of whom had not been.

What the researchers learned is that death and injury crash rates for 16-year-old drivers were 20 percent lower in Oregon where those restrictions exist than in Ontario, where they do not, according to AAA.

Rhode Island’s “graduated driving laws,” which is the term for laws that allow teens to build experience behind the wheel before encountering complex driving situations, prevent newly licensed drivers from being on the road between 1 and 5 a.m. and require new drivers to limit those under-21 passengers to one.

Posted by Kate Bramson  at 3:30 PM | Permalink

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