Wrong way for teen drivers

California's tough "graduated driver licensing" law has been in effect for nearly a decade. It requires that drivers under 18 carry a learner's permit for at least six months before getting a provisional license, and that they practice driving with a parent or guardian during that period. For the first six months that they have the provisional license, teen drivers cannot drive passengers younger than 20 unless they are accompanied by a licensed driver 25 or older. Other severe restrictions apply, including rules about nighttime driving.

The law was designed to reduce the number of teen drivers killed or injured in www.aaa-calif.com%2fcorpinfo%2fguides%2fteens.aspx ">traffic accidents . Unfortunately, the latest data indicate that young people just getting their licenses are more likely to be killed in traffic crashes today than were those who started driving under the state's old, less-restrictive licensing system.

These unexpected results suggest that the safety experts may have gotten the teen-driving issue wrong, and that in fact it is not age but greater experience behind the wheel that makes older drivers safer than younger ones.

Is California's teen-driver law -- the nation's strictest and touted by safety experts as a national model -- really hazardous for the state's teen drivers?

A study I conducted raises that possibility. Published in the National Safety Council's Journal of Safety Research, it found, as did previous researchers, that California's graduated licensing law was associated with fewer fatalities among 16-year-old drivers (down 20% through 2005). But that reduction was more than offset by the increased death rate -- up 24% -- of 18-year-olds, whose driving records researchers have neglected to study. The latest figures also indicate higher-than-expected fatalities among drivers aged 19, 20 and 21 who were licensed under the new law. The death rates of 17-year-olds changed little.