It's Not About Age.(Column)

Byline: Kevin A. Wilson

The stats are coming in on America's decade-old switch away from public-school driver education and toward graduated driver licensing (GDL), and they largely confirm what we've been saying: New drivers don't crash because they're 16. New drivers of all ages crash because they're untrained and inexperienced.

Both the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times published reports on the subject recently, demonstrating that there's an opening to make our point but also that the mass media do not get it.

The Federal Highway Administration says the proportion of licensed 16-year-olds dropped from 43.8 percent in 1998 to 29.8 percent in 2006, a period that encompasses the spread of GDL. Exploring other reasons, the New York Times notes that most public schools no longer offer driver's ed, so parents need to pay private companies more to get the training required by GDL. Also, they reported, insurers charge a lot more to put a new 16-year-old on a policy than they do for an 18-year-old. Simple family economics, right?

The Los Angeles paper reveals a bit more in a pair of opposing-view op-ed pieces on GDL by Mike Males of Youthfacts.org and Jerry Gaines, a past president of the California Association for Safety Education. In 1990, the California state government, along with other states and ...