Buck Up for Safety.(Column)

Byline: Kevin A. Wilson

America will license 6 million new drivers this year and next. More than 90 percent will take to the roads having completed only the standard 30/6 education: 30 hours of classroom instruction and six hours at the wheel with a paid teacher. Under graduated licensing laws, most also will have done 50 hours accompanied by a licensed adult. Many of those adults will sign off after too few hours or are such poor drivers themselves that they have little to teach, but poor parenting and remedial driver education are topics for another day.

In the wake of the first AutoWeek Teen Driving Safety Summit, we're thinking about what it might cost us to train all new drivers properly. Let's say we split the difference among the costs of all the skills-based driving programs that were represented at the Summit-prices range from zero to about $1,200. Call it $600 per driver, a figure at least double what it might really cost, since commercial enterprises do what we need for less than $200. Still, let's shoot high. For 6 million new drivers to get $600 more training would cost $3.6 billion more a year.

What do crashes (they're not accidents, they're crashes) cost us? According to ...