Lets start on the tenet of age discrimination. Is age a criteria that can be used to disqualify someone from an activity? The answer falls into the murky area of “it depends” as we various laws inconsistently define it. Commit a crime when you are 16, and you can be tried as an adult, but you can’t drink, vote, sign a contract or smoke a cigarette. All activities relegated to adulthood. Driving, which is as far as activities go, pretty measureable, is one of those inconsistent regulated activities.

Some do argue that teen drivers cause a disproportionate share of accidents because they are relatively inexperienced. That may be true, but then why isn’t the concern experience not age? And are infrequent drivers, just as likely? No one really wants to solve the real issue, which is that there are bad drivers out there, of all ages, and those are the ones that should be banned from the roads. To do so, would cause a revisit of the idea that driving skills should be tested on a periodic basis. For some reason, that idea never takes off. I’d make it mandatory that if you had a number of moving violations or accidents of a certain type you would have to be retested. But instead we get laws like the newly minted Teen Driving Law signed in April. From the Courant:

The first item on the list, titled “48-Hour License Suspension for Certain Violations,” is sure to have the biggest impact on police. The provision requires officers to immediately seize the license of teen drivers for violating passenger or curfew restrictions, or for more serious offenses such as driving 20 mph over the speed limit or more, driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs, reckless driving or racing. Officers must hold the temporarily suspended license for 48 hours until the teen and a parent or guardian signs for it.

The law essentially makes the police act as a parent by taking away the driver’s license. Essentially for a non moving violation. So late at night (after 11pm) a police officer will have to peer into a car to determine if a driver is under 18 and check the clock, and whether there are passengers. We all know how effective bouncers are at checking IDs by flashlight at the entrance to clubs at 10. You would think that common sense would prevail since this law is essentially unenforceable, unless you start down the slippery slope of profiling.

A plan to require cars driven by teenagers to have stickers identifying them was supported by police chiefs across the state. But many parents and other Connecticut adults didn’t agree. When the governor’s office conducted a statewide poll of 807 adults in January, only 38 percent of parents and 43 percent of other adults supported teen identification stickers. In the legislature, the measure was rejected for lack of popular support and cost concerns.

“There was a lot of concern among parents that if a kid had a sticker like that they could be profiled or victims of discrimination,” Farmington Police Chief James Rio said.

Today the conundrum remains. How can police enforce restrictions on teen drivers without knowing which drivers are under 18? Police and the chief state’s attorney’s office agree that officers cannot single out young drivers because of their appearance.

“We can’t just stop a car because a person looks underage and they have a passenger in the car,” Rio said.

Unless police departments set up costly and time-consuming police checkpoints near schools or during certain hours, many officers are likely to continue approaching passenger restrictions and curfew laws the way they often do now — as “secondary” infractions, violations that police tack to the “primary” reason for a stop, such as speeding or running a red light, police said. That approach, which avoids profiling, is the proper way to enforce teen driving restrictions, Susan Marcu Naide of the chief state’s attorney’s office said.

Glastonbury’s Chief Sweeney said it is a trade-off the public should be willing to accept if they do not want to give police a visual cue to identify teen drivers.

“Don’t come back in a year or two and be distressed by the fact that it’s being treated as secondary enforcement,” Sweeney said.

The focus on teens is misguided. The real focus should be put on enforcing the driving laws we have, the ones that don’t get tickets issued like lane changes without signaling, speeding, reckless driving, turns into the far lanes etc.

Both statistics and anecdotal evidence suggest that restrictions on teenage drivers, called graduated driver licensing, or GDL, laws, have been largely under-enforced since they were first introduced in 2004. In 2005, just 262 teen drivers statewide — or about an average of 1.5 per town — were convicted of violating either passenger restriction laws, curfew or both, according to the state Department of Motor Vehicles. That number rose to 600 in 2006 before dropping slightly to 549 — an average of about 3.2 convictions per town — in 2007.

“We under-enforce it right now. There’s no doubt about it,” Rio said. As a member of the governor’s teen driving task force, Rio heard parents, teens and driving instructors all say police have been soft on teens in the past.

“We got a lot of anecdotal stories of instances where police officers have stopped kids and either did not recognize that they were in violation of GDL laws or took a very light approach,” Rio said.

“I want to get officers in the mind-set that we’re going to enforce all the motor vehicle laws,” he added. “It’s not an incidental thing.”

Rio pointed to the enforcement of teen driving laws in Massachusetts as a good example of how “proactive” enforcement can be done. There, police conduct “educational stings” at high schools, issuing warnings to teens who are not in compliance with passenger restriction laws and rewarding those who are with coupons for pizza, lollipops or key chains, according to a spokeswoman for the state Registry of Motor Vehicles. Only the lollipops are paid for by the registry; the pizza and key chains are donated by AAA and the state Executive Office of Public Safety, respectively.

But there are differences between the two states. In Massachusetts, the state employs 41 compliance officers who help coordinate enforcement and educational stings. And police aren’t required to immediately seize a teen’s license, meaning they are less likely to get bogged down contacting parents when they issue a citation.

William Seymour, a state DMV spokesman, said his department, law enforcement organizations, the chief state’s attorney’s office, the state DOT and the federal National Highway Traffic Safety Administration have been meeting regularly to “put together a first-ever graduated driver licensing enforcement program in Connecticut.” Seymour also said the state may be able to get federal funds to help with teen driving law enforcement.

Ultimately, local and state police hope the tough penalties for teen drivers — first-time suspensions of 30 days for using a cellphone while driving, violating passenger restrictions or curfew; 60 days for speeding; six months for reckless driving or racing; a year for drinking and driving — will curb the types of tragic accidents that have focused attention on teen driving over the past year.

It’s time to stop the endless vigil on teens and focus more on bad driving over all. The driving that we all see on the roads.

source: Courant Enforcing New Teen Driving Law Could Be Challenge, By MAGDALENE PEREZ, May 10, 2008