Raise the driving age

IN LICENSING young drivers, the state must consider maturity as well as experience. Two auto accidents, only nine days apart, have left four dead -- a boy and a girl, both 16, in Reading, and another girl, 17, and her 10-year-old brother, in Hopkinton.

Scott Connolly of Reading was doing more than 100 miles an hour when his BMW went out of control and smashed into a tree, according to Julia Rodriguez, the mother of the girl who was killed with him. Speed may also have been a factor in the Hopkinton crash this weekend, according to police.

These horrors are moving state legislators to act promptly. They should, not because of the emotions involved, but because action on this and related issues is overdue. The cochairmen of the Transportation Committee are moving toward a comprehensive reform of the laws relating to young drivers. With some improvements, it would be a fine start.

The Legislature should then seek broader legislation that would make the state's roadways much safer than they are today. One problem is the diffusion of responsibility within the Legislature. It probably makes sense for auto insurance to be handled by the Financial Services Committee, but why is seat belt regulation the province of the Public Safety Committee and drunken driving bills dealt with by the Judiciary Committee, while the driving age and cellphone use by drivers are controlled by the Transportation Committee? Legislative leaders would do well to impanel a task force to consider the full range of auto safety issues in coordinated fashion.

As for the driving age, any worthy reform will consider three factors: maturity, experience, and enforcement. According to Senator Steven Baddour of Methuen and Representative Joseph Wagner of Chicopee, the Transportation cochairs, a bill they will probably report to the House floor this week will include a delay of six months, until age 16 1/2, for youths to get a learner's permit, and a year's delay, until age 17 1/2, to get a junior operator's license. Driver education would be stiffened to include 15 hours of on-the-road training, rather than the current six. And 50 hours of driving with a parent or other supervisor would also be required, although this would be difficult to verify. Incentives for advanced driver training would be increased, but should be raised even higher.

There will be opposition to raising the driving age, but the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has documented that novice 16-year-olds have more accidents than novice 17-year-olds. In many ways, nearly all 16-year-olds are still children. Maturity arrives at different ages for different people, but never overnight. How long it would have taken for these four young lives to mature fully no one will ever know.