Local & State Headlines

Officials: Teen driving statistics improving

• Some officers say that the more obscure parts of Georgia's driving laws are rarely enforced if other traffic crimes are committed by drivers.

J.D. Sumner

ALBANY — State and local officials say that more than 10 years after legislators passed a driving reform bill, teen crashes and driver-related crimes are declining.

Georgia’s Teenage and Adult Driver Responsibility Act, or TADRA, authored and passed by legislators in 1997, reformatted the provisions for obtaining and keeping a license to drive in the state.

The most dramatic change in the law restructured the permit system into three tiers leading drivers 15-18 through an instructional permit, an intermediate permit and finally a full license once drivers reach 18 years of age and have had no major traffic convictions for the previous year.

But in addition to the restructuring, the law also contains more obscure requirements on drivers and passengers that weren’t in the previous law.

According to TADRA information released by the Governor’s Office of Highway Safety, drivers between 16 and 18 years old who have had their instructional permit for 12 months can’t drive between the hours of midnight and 6 a.m.

Additionally, for the first six months after earning the intermediate permit, driver’s can’t drive on public roads with a passenger that isn’t a member of the driver’s immediate family. That restriction changes during the second six- month period and allows for only one non-family member passenger who is under 21 years old in the vehicle .

After the second six-month period and until the driver earns the full permit, the driver can’t have more than three non-family passengers in the vehicle who are under 21.

Additionally, in January 2007, Joshua’s law was added to the bill. That legislation requires teen drivers with the intermediate permit to have completed a state-certified drivers education course and completed at least 40 hours of supervised driving, including six hours of driving at night, to become eligible for the full permit.

But are police really scouring the streets checking carloads of teens for proof of family ties? At least one officer says it was something that got checked a lot when the bill first passed, but that as the public’s education of the driving laws increased, the offenses have taken a downturn.

“We used to see it a lot,” Dougherty County Police HEAT Coordinator Lt. Tom Jackson said. “But now it’s more rare.”

Jackson said the purpose behind the law was to cut the rising tide of teen crashes in the state.

At least one Lee County Deputy, who asked not to be named, said that the obscure parts of the law are rarely enforced unless the driver has committed no other driving infraction.

According to GOHS, the concept behind the obscure parts of the law were that if law enforcement can prevent inexperienced teen drivers from riding in large groups together, they would be less likely to crash because of fewer, in-car distractions.

Jackson credits classes like the GOHS-sponsored “Ride with PRIDE” program, which educates parents and teens about the Georgia driving laws, for helping to explain the finer points of the law to the public.

PRIDE, or Parents Reducing Instances of Driver Error, is significantly reducing teen- related crashes in Dougherty County, Jackson said.

Statewide, the laws seem to be working.

According to GOHS, since the law was enacted the rate of fatal crashes by 16-year-old drivers has decreased by 36.8 percent. Fatal crashes involving 16-year-olds driving at unsafe and illegal speeds has decreased by 42 percent and, with the exception of 18-year- old drivers, fatal crash rates declined in all of the age groups of people under the age of 25.

“I know in Dougherty County the rates have been dramatic,” Jackson said.

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