Happy Global Youth Traffic Safety Month to all. As it has for years, the National Organizations for Youth Safety, www.noys.org, is leading the activities this month.
On April 30th, at Glastonbury High School here in Connecticut, I learned about implementation of a simple way to deal with the danger of teen drivers with teen passengers, and enforcement of passenger limits contained in state teen driver laws.
As occurs at many high schools, students at GHS with a license receive a sticker or decal on their car that allows them to park on campus. (In general, at schools, sometimes it is an actual adhesive sticker, and sometimes a medallion that sits on the dashboard or hangs from the rearview mirror — in a non-distracting way). Glastonbury’s new system is that the decal will be color-coded by class (senior-junior-other), and those teen drivers who are operating under the state law passenger restriction will have an additional marker. Connecticut’s passenger law is no teen passengers except siblings until six months after getting a license, and one year from licensing for non-family members. This parking sticker marker is removable when the teen has aged out of the passenger restriction. Parents, law enforcement, and school officials can see the marker, and so they know if a passenger restriction applies to that teen driver and car.
Seems like a simple, effective way to deal with one of the primary dangers of teen driving.
