U.S. report recommends increasing driver’s license ages to beyond 16

Licensing U.S. teenagers to drive at ages older than 16 would substantially reduce crashes involving teen drivers, a new Insurance Institute for Highway Safety report says.
The report, which cites Canadian research, has been released at the annual meeting of the Governors Highway Safety Association.
The report notes recent U.S. legislative proposals to increase driver’s license ages to 17 have met with failure in Delaware, Florida and Georgia. Massachusetts attempted in two separate bills to increase the minimum driving age to 17 and 18, but neither bill passed.
“This is a tough sell,” says Anne McCartt, Institute senior vice president for research, “but it’s an important enough issue to challenge the silence and at least consider changing the age at which we allow teenagers to get their licenses to drive.”
The Institute says a basic question is whether the risk associated with beginning drivers is a consequence of their youth and immaturity, or their inexperience behind the wheel.
“If it’s mainly immaturity, then it would pay to put off licensure until teenagers get a little older,” the Institute notes. “But if the problem is mostly inexperience, delaying licensure would simply put off the toll of beginners’ crashes. It’s hard to separate these two factors.”
The institute report then cites Canadian research reported in 1992.
“Canadian researchers tried to untangle the influence of age and experience on crashes involving beginners by dividing drivers 16, 17, and 18 years old according to whether they had been driving less than a year or more than a year,” the Institute says. “The main findingis that 16 year-olds, especially girls this age, had higher rates of injury crashes than older teenagers who also were new to the road.”