A new study indicates that laws designed to restrict 16-year-olds from obtaining full driving privileges help save lives. Fatal accidents involving new drivers are down by 20 percent in states that have such restrictions according to the study conducted by two researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore.
Some of the restrictions sited by the study include limiting the hours teens can drive unsupervised by adults, the number of passengers they can carry or the hours they can be on the roads.
'We already knew that the programs reduced crash rates of young drivers, but we didn't know which programs were most effective,' explained Susan Baker, the study's lead author. She added that 'it is clear that more comprehensive programs have the greatest effect,' she said.
Nicole Nason, the new head of the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration is hoping that states will pass additional restrictions on teen drivers. She noted that traffic accidents are the leading cause of death in teenagers. The federal government said that in 2004, 1,111 people were killed in 957 fatal crashes involving 16-year-old drivers.
There are problems associated with the law, however. The simplest is that police cannot tell how old a driver is without pulling him or her over, making enforcement difficult.
