So there's a bill that could cut down on teenage car crashes. Apparently, if this law passes, teenage drivers will face restrictions on how late at night they can drive, how many people they can drive with, and such. States that have implemented these restrictions have reportedly seen the number of fatal teenage crashes go down by as much as 40%.
But before I support such a bill, I would want to see evidence that it's not just pushing the most dangerous age for driving up a few years. One would think that, if you put those restrictions on teens at the age when the most teens die in car crashes, then the teens who survived would enter young adulthood with less experience driving at night and less experience driving with a lot of people in the car, and therefore suffer more fatal crashes later instead of earlier. Inexperienced people are always the most at risk, and unfortunately you always start out inexperienced at the thing you're starting, no matter what age you start at.
So what I want to know is: In the states where 40% fewer 16-year-olds died in car crashes, did the number of deaths actually go up for people over 16? If it did, then I don't see the point of this law.
Now, it's possible that a year or two of restricted driving gave these teenagers enough experience that they were able to become safer drivers in young adulthood, but until the ads plugging this new bill actually state evidence of that, I'm not going to jump to the conclusion that it's the right thing to do. When they're specifically stating that "fatal crashes among 16-year-olds went down 40%," but then conspicuously failing to mention what happened to rates of fatal crashes among other age groups, I've got to wonder.
Personally I'd rather have a bill that bans driving for all age groups, and requires the entire country to have a good rail transit system. I'm sure technology can come up with solutions for the types of situations where taking the train is inconvenient... and if we could pull it off, the number of lives it would save would be rather astounding. (Or maybe not, seeing that a huge percentage of transplant organs come from car crash victims, so maybe the deaths from lack of organ donors would cancel it out. Oh well.)
2 comments:
"... I would want to see evidence that [restricting teenage drivers] is not just pushing the most dangerous age for driving up a few years."
I wonder about that as well.
"Personally I'd rather have a bill that bans driving for all age groups, and requires the entire country to have a good rail transit system."
Oh my gosh yes! Maybe not really with the banning driving (though ask me again the next time somebody almost runs me over!), but certainly making other choices available for getting around will take lots of dangerous drivers off the road. For many people, the choice is between driving and not going anywhere on their own, and that's a terrible choice.
Here in Germany, teenagers must drive with their mother or father or older sibling with them. So there is always one rookie teamed together with an experienced driver.
It's called Begleitetes Fahren mit 17 (BF17, you may look it up on Wikipedia.
Yours, Willy
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