Experts on child deaths in Vermont say the Legislature should prohibit teens from driving in the late night and early morning hours. Vermont is the only state in the nation without a nighttime restriction on junior driver’s licenses.
In a report this month, the state’s Child Fatality Review Team called attention to seven teen driver deaths in crashes between 11 p.m. and 4:59 a.m. over a 15-year period.
“This is oftentimes someone's first experience with a peer death,” said Dr. Rebecca Bell, co-chair of the team and a critical care physician at the University of Vermont Medical Center. “It really affects them for the rest of their lives.”
Her team recommends an amendment that would prohibit teens from driving between midnight and 5 a.m. with a junior license, which is typically held by 16- and 17-year-olds. The report is meant to be a conversation-starter, Bell said, with room for fine-tuning the details of a potential rule change.
"Research shows that their decision-making capacity is not fully at where it's going to be when they're adults."Dr. Rebecca Bell, Child Fatality Review Team
“The teen years can be very fraught for families and for young people. It's a period of time where we want young people to have more independence,” Bell said. “But it's also a time when research shows that their decision-making capacity is not fully at where it's going to be when they're adults.”
Car crashes are the leading cause of death among Vermont adolescents, and nearly a quarter of those fatal accidents have occurred at night, said Secretary of Transportation Joe Flynn.
“Moving towards something that might prevent teen deaths in the overnight hours is a direction we could certainly consider supporting,” Flynn said of the Agency of Transportation.
Members of the Senate Committee on Transportation agreed unanimously that driving safety is a priority this session. Committee member Sen. Andrew Perchlik plans to suggest inviting the Child Fatality Review Team to testify.
“It's quite devastating to the community when some young, innocent life is taken needlessly, and if there's things that we can do to improve the safety and decrease the chances of this happening, the state should definitely do it,” said Perchlik, a Democrat/Progressive from Washington County.
However, state lawmakers remain sensitive to unintended consequences of a nighttime ban, like burdening the nearly 50% of Vermonters aged 16-19 who hold jobs.
“They might work at a local restaurant and need to come home after it's dark, and that puts a pressure on either their parents to go out and get them or for them to just not have a job,” said Addison County Democratic Sen. Ruth Hardy, who sponsored legislation last year attempting to expand driver’s education. “There are families that really need teens to have a job in order to make ends meet, so limiting their ability to drive at night can often have an economic impact.”
Language that targets only late night and early morning hours would avoid conflicts with regular commutes, and exceptions for teens with jobs could draw wider endorsement, Perchlik said.
“If we need to make this change to just make sure they have more experience under their belt as drivers before we allow them to drive at night, then I think that's an important thing to do, and clearly other states have recognized that,” Hardy said.
