Safety trumps convenience

By The Gazette Editorial Board

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Elizabeth Cassler was 17 when the car's 15-year-old driver lost control on an icy road and crashed in December 2008.

The Central Iowa girl suffered a traumatic brain injury and nearly died. She was in a coma for more than two months.

The story is tragically familiar. Motor vehicle crashes are the cause of nearly half of all teen deaths in Iowa - 162 drivers ages 14-17 have been killed in crashes in the past five years.

Lucky for Cassler, she was able to recover from her injuries. Lucky, too, there are ways to curb the number of teen crashes and resulting injury.

Proponents who want to improve Iowa's graduated driver's license system have some reasonable ideas that would help protect new drivers from some of their greatest safety risks. But there's bad news, too, as we see it: Advocates' proposal to shore up Iowa's graduated driver's license rules will likely face tough sledding in this year's Legislature.

We hope legislators will review the facts and take a hard look at revising Iowa's law.

A coalition of health, transportation and safety groups is urging lawmakers to update and upgrade the teen driver licensing structure in Iowa.

They want the state to expand the instruction permit period from six months to 12 months to allow for more supervised driving experience.

That would be followed by a 12-month intermediate license restricting the driver to no more than one nonfamily passenger under age 21, and with driving between 10 p.m. and 5 a.m. allowed only when supervised by an adult or a waiver for school or work activities.

Representatives from the group shared some startling DOT statistics with us this week.

Iowa's 16- and 17-year-old drivers are involved in more fatal crashes between 10 p.m. and midnight than at any other time of day, they said. Teen drivers are at least three times more likely to crash if they have more than one passenger than when they drive alone.

The suggested license modifications would help minimize those risks and allow new drivers to gain more experience behind the wheel while being supervised.

We understand legislators have a number of major issues to consider in the months ahead. But these modest modifications of Iowa's graduated license law could literally be a matter of life and death for our young drivers.

“You can even blame it on me,” Cassler wrote in a testimonial urging stronger requirements. “I don't want anyone else to go through what I had to go through, because it really stinks.”

We understand that teenagers and their families like the convenience of fewer driving limits. But we can and should do more to protect Iowa's teen drivers.

Convenience should take a back seat to safety.

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