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When it comes to the safety of teen drivers, experience may matter much more than the age of the motorist. According to a new study by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety, extending the graduated driver licensing laws to drivers beyond the age of 17 could help to reduce the number of road accidents involving teenage and young drivers.
According to the study, graduated driver licensing programs could benefit teenagers more when they start driving at a later age. For example, when a motorist begins driving at the age of 17, instead of 16, he's much more likely to be safer because of the kind of experience that he gets in driving in risky situations, like driving at night or driving with passengers, when he's older.
The practical driving experience that such a motorist gains is good for an older teenage motorist. According to the researchers, automatically assuming that a motorist of the age of 18 is capable of driving safely is a huge mistake.
The study focused on two separate studies in the states of California and North Carolina. In both of these states, motorists are allowed to begin driving at the age of 16. In these states, the researchers found that new drivers got their licenses at older ages, but were less likely to be involved in an accident during the initial months or years of driving, compared to those who got their learners permit much earlier.
Then the researchers compared those findings with the findings of another study that was conducted in the state of New Jersey, where motorists must be a minimum of 17 years of age, for unsupervised driving. In New Jersey, the graduated driver licensing program has laws, even for drivers up to the age of 21, a feature that is not in existence in the graduated driver’s licensing program in California. The researchers found that in New Jersey, older beginners had much lower accident rates and lower rates of involvement in injurious accidents, compared to younger beginners.
