A recent report by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) focuses on the consequences of allowing drivers' licensure sooner rather than later.

Findings indicate that licensing at later ages would substantially reduce crashes involving teen drivers. The same conclusion has been reached in other countries. For instance, teens in Great Britain and most Australian states cannot obtain licenses before the age of 17. In addition, the 18-year mark represents the age at which most European teens can obtain a license to drive.

By contrast, most U.S. states permit driving at earlier ages, usually at 16. But legislation introduced during the most recent sessions of lawmakers in Delaware, Florida, and Georgia could change that. The proposal is for states to adopt 17 as the minimum age at which a teen can secure a driver's license. One bill in Massachusetts also proposed 17, while another one argued for 18. Thus far, these measures, including one that would have raised the licensing age in Illinois to 18, have been unsuccessful.

“This is a tough sell,” said Anne McCartt, IIHS senior vice president of 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. After all, graduated licensing programs have been successful ever since states began to adopt them more than a decade ago. Raising the licensing age is the next logical step to reduce driving by the riskiest motorists on the road: the youngest ones.”

The graduated systems in most U.S. states include permit periods, and they limit when and with whom young beginners may drive. The result has been lower crash rates in state after state.

Among U.S. states, only New Jersey postpones licensure until age 17. A recent analysis of the crash experience indicates a rate of 4.4 per 100,000 16-year-old drivers were in fatal crashes during the study years, compared with 20.7 per 100,000 in neighboring Connecticut, where 16 year-old drivers could get licenses. The lower death rate in New Jersey was offset by a slightly higher rate at age 17 (32.3 versus 31.1 per 100,000), but the combined rate for 16 and 17 year-old drivers was still much lower than in Connecticut. These comparisons don't reflect the benefits of graduated licensing in either state because the study years, 1992 to 1996, fell before graduated systems began to be adopted in New Jersey (2001) or Connecticut (1997).

Two previous Institute studies also compared the effects of the licensing policies in New Jersey versus Connecticut. During 1975 to 1980, there were four crash deaths of 16-year-old drivers per 100,000 in New Jersey compared with 26 per 100,000 in Connecticut. The authors estimated that Connecticut could achieve a 66 percent reduction in fatal crashes among 16- and 17-year-old drivers by changing the licensing age to 17. Similar differences in these states' rates of all kinds of crashes, not just fatal ones, were reported a decade later.

The fundamental question is whether the risk associated with beginning drivers stems from youth and immaturity or inexperience behind the wheel. If the heightened risk can be chalked to immaturity, then it would make sense to postpone licensure until teenagers get a little older. If the problem is mostly inexperience, then delaying licensure would simply put off the toll of beginners' crashes. 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 main finding, reported in 1992, is that 16 year-olds, especially females, had higher rates of injury crashes than older teenagers who also were new to the road.

“Apart from the effects of age or experience, delaying driver licensure reduces crash rates by reducing the amount young people drive,” McCartt says.

Special Reports /

Considerations for Raising Driver Licensing Age

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