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By Rose Hoban, N.C. Health News 

One night, not long after I’d graduated high school on Long Island, New York, a group of kids from a neighboring school went out to a well-known steakhouse in the town of Mineola for dinner. As they headed home that evening, they were driving down Herricks Road when the arms at the on-grade railroad crossing started to come down.

Witnesses said their van swerved around the crossing arm and was crossing the tracks when it was hit by a Long Island Rail Road train going at full speed.

There were 10 kids in that van, nine of them were killed.

I was thinking of those kids last week as I sat in on the N.C. General Assembly’s House Transportation Committee meeting, where North Carolina’s graduated driver’s license regimen was being discussed, HB 584. It is sponsored by Reps. David Willis (R-Union), Jake Johnson (R-Henderson), Jeffrey McNeely (R-Iredell), Wyatt Gable (R-Onslow), and Ray Pickett (R-Wautaga).

Twenty-five years ago, North Carolina initiated that regimen, which requires — among other things — that for a period of one year, kids’ driving is monitored by a parent, guardian or someone who’s had a driver’s license for more than five years.

The rationale was that a kid gains experience in all seasons and all weather conditions, with someone experienced by their side. They learn the limitations of their vehicles and of other drivers on the road. They learn to be cautious, they learn not to run the railroad crossing arms, they learn what they don’t know.

That takes time.

But don’t take it from me, take it from Oscar Outen, who runs Oscar’s Driving School and sits in a vehicle with teenagers every day.

“They’re a smart generation. Don’t get me wrong. They are very smart, but they live in a virtual world, and they’re not behind the wheel of a car,” said Outen, who’s also the head of the North Carolina Private Commercial Driving School Association. “They’re no longer sitting in the vehicle on their cell phones. The world’s coming at them at 35, 55 miles an hour, and they’re smart, but their reactionary time is not there.”

Outen came to the House Transportation Committee meeting last Wednesday to try to persuade lawmakers not to slash the graduated driver license practice time to six months.

House Bill 584 would do just that until the end of the year. A few years ago, as the pandemic was ending, the General Assembly changed the supervised time from 12 months to six and then back up to nine.

NC Health News found that, according to data from the Highway Safety Research Center at UNC Chapel Hill, in those two years, the rate of fatal crashes among 16-year-old drivers increased.

With the proliferation of long lines at the state Division of Motor Vehicles right now (exacerbated by unfilled positions and increased demand ahead of the REAL ID deadline May 7), lawmakers proposed the shorter, six-month supervised driving period.

The legislation would also do away with some other requirements in the graduated driver license regimen: physical logs kept by parents, and a certificate from a high school that the student remains enrolled. Many people, including DMV officials, have indicated that they’re fine with that.

But the people who came to the hearing were opposed to shortening supervision time.

Outen pointed out it’s not just a safety issue for the kids, but for all drivers.

“The actuaries are going to take a look at these numbers, and you are going to pay more for insurance too. Because if we take away that training time, those teens, statistically, will start wrecking more,” he said. Outen also worried that the “temporary” measure would become permanent.

Several Republican members spoke about the bill, saying they would vote against it. Nonetheless, it passed the committee on a voice vote.

I was sitting in the back, and it sure sounded to me like the bill had not garnered a majority of votes. But there was no show of hands. The committee chair declared it passed. And it moved to the Judiciary Committee, where it is likely to face more scrutiny.

Rose Hoban, the founder and editor of N.C. Health News, is a registered nurse and journalist who’s been reporting on health care in North Carolina for two decades. A version of this piece originally appeared in the newsletter for N.C. Health News (northcarolinahealthnews.org). This opinion column is syndicated by Beacon Media, beaconmedianc.org.

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