Raising the driving age recommended by safety group

Raising the driving age recommended by safety group

A longstanding rite of passage for 16-year-olds could be ending if an influential auto safety group gets their way. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, a research group funded by the auto insurance industry, is calling on states to raise the age for getting a driver's license to 17 or even 18.

A longstanding rite of passage for 16-year-olds could be ending if an influential auto safety group gets their way.

"The bottom line is that when we look at the research, raising the driving age saves lives," said Adrian Lund, president of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. Research says that car crashes are the leading cause of death among teenagers.

More than 5,000 U.S. teens die each year in car crashes. The rate of crashes, fatal and nonfatal, per mile driven for 16-year-old drivers is almost 10 times the rate for drivers ages 30 to 59, according to the National Highway Safety Administration. Many industrialized countries in Europe and elsewhere have a driving age of 17 or 18.

Among other things, institute researchers have compiled decades worth of data from New Jersey, the only state that issues licenses at 17. Various studies have shown that the overall rate of teens killed in crashes in New Jersey has been consistently lower than in some nearby states.

One study from the 1990s found that the rate of crash-related deaths among 16- and 17-year olds were 18 per 100,000 in New Jersey, compared with 26 per 100,000 in Connecticut. Those rates, researchers said, have dropped even further since both states instituted graduated driver's license programs.

Graduated licensing, which has become the standard across the country in the past 15 years, requires teens to spend more time driving with a parent or other responsible adult before they go solo. Though these rules are sometimes difficult to enforce, many states tie these more stringent standards to declining teen crash rates.

This article contains information from the Associated Press