The recent anonymous comment on my previous post suggested I needed to look more into the bill. Personally I find it a little bit ridiculous he or she would suggest this, considering I linked to the actual text of the bill, would I really have done that if I didn’t read it?
Anyhow, rest assured Anon, I did look over the bill. And my objections still stand – in fact they were formulated after reading it, before writing the post.
(On a completely separate note, if this bill isn’t all about the decals, why is it the primary feature mentioned in the bill summary, while the other features I am about to discuss aren’t even mentioned?)
So let’s break it down. As Anon emphasized, the stated objective of this bill is:
trying to prevent more teens from going out each year for a drive and not returning home
That’s a noble goal, I won’t disagree. Nor do I blame Kyleigh’s mother for pushing this bill, she suffered a grievous loss and it’s an understandable reaction. But it’s not the right one.
As I understand it, apart from the decal requirement, the bill rests on two points:
- Add to and expand on the restrictions placed on holders of graduated licenses.
- Increase the penalties for the holders of said licenses.
On the face of it, this seems like a logical approach for trying to curb reckless teen driving. However, I would argue that a deeper analysis suggests otherwise.
Let’s take point 1.
The major restriction increase is an expansion of the waiting period before an individual can receive a provisional license. Most likely the logic is that more time spent on an examination permit will provide greater experience and therefore make the drivers safer.
This might be true, but there’s two incentive factors that need to be taken into account with regards to this idea. What this restriction effectively does is increases the cost (in time) of getting a driver’s license, and I suspect that cost increase will lead to several negative unintended consequences.
The first of these possible unintended consequences is that by increasing the time cost of obtaining a license, young drivers will be all the more ecstatic over receiving it and will go all out once they have the license. This of course will mean they will be driving more often, and quite possibly, due to their excitement and newfound freedom, more recklessly, not less.
The second possible unintended consequence is that by increasing the time cost young people will simply decide the cost is too high and defer getting their license until they are old enough to bypass the most onerous of the restrictions. As a result individuals will be receiving licenses with little experience and little in the way of requirement. This is a disastrous possibility as the main danger of young drivers is their inexperience, not their age. Even worse, with the large amount of public transportation, I would consider it well within the realm of possibility.
Moving on to point 2.
Higher penalties are the other half of the non-decal features of the bill. The logic here seems to be that with higher penalties young drivers will be less likely to violate the restrictions for fear of punishment.
People frequently seem to think this way, but as far as I can tell, the evidence seldom seems to support the idea. Think about it.
If punishment effectively deterred wrongdoing how common would any of these be:
- Cheating on tests
- Underage drinking
- Illegal drug use
- Etc.
Or since we’re discussing a driving issue, what about road offenses. The following are all nominally illegal in NJ but still happen quite a bit:
- Speeding
- Talking on a handset while driving
- Not signaling when turning
- Etc.
The fact is that breaking the rules can have great advantages and minimal costs, particularly when enforcement is difficult, as is the case with rules pertaining to driving. With so many cars and only so many cops, a whole lot of people will get away with not obeying the law.
Teens aren’t stupid. They know this. Some will obey the rules. But I guarantee plenty will also gamble they won’t be caught and disregard the rules. And for some reason I figure it’s not the kids that obey the rules that are causing the accidents.
And I believe this is part of where the decal comes in. I’ll review a few points on that, just for good measure.
The idea is that by placing the decal police will have an easier time identifying young drivers and making sure they’re obeying the laws. But, considering the points already made, that doesn’t make much sense either.
We’ve already established some segment of the young driving population won’t obey the rules. The decal is supposed to make sure they obey the rules by making them more visible. But if they’re already breaking one set of rules, why would they obey the one that would make it easy to catch them? So that makes it pointless, apart from all the other decal problems mentioned already.
And then there’s the whole injustice of the entire package to address.
Youths aren’t the only groups that have accidents at disproportionately high rates. The elderly also have an above average number of accidents and, according to some statistics I’ve seen, have the highest rates of deadly crashes. Where’s the effort to save their lives by restricting their driving rights?
Or Native Americans and Hispanics? If numbers of car crashes are broken down by ethnicity, as was done in this report by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, you find that both groups have fatal accidents at significantly higher rates than any other population. Additionally fatal car accidents are the top cause of death across multiple age groups within these populations.
So why don’t we put special requirements on these groups? According to Sen. Fred Madden,
This bill isn’t about profiling or discriminating against young drivers. Instead, it seeks to ensure that parents, young drivers and police officers are able to take an active role in protecting our roadways
If it’s not discriminating against young drivers to put such restrictions on them, it wouldn’t be discriminating to place them on other groups as well, in order to make sure they stay safe and lose fewer lives.
The fact is that so long as bills like this exclusively target young people legislators are either saying it’s ok to discriminate against young people or the lives of the elderly and minority groups matter less. And neither of those is acceptable to me.
So call your Assemblymen and tell them to vote no on A3069.
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