Nationwide Evaluation of Graduated Driver Licensing

Sixteen-year-old drivers are involved in 38 percent fewer fatal crashes and 40 percent fewer crashes resulting in injuries if their state has a graduated driver licensing (GDL) program with at least five of seven common components, according to the most recent study released by the AAA Foundation.

“Motor vehicle crashes remain the number one cause of death for teens in the United States, and roughly 1,000 16-year-old drivers are involved in fatal crashes each year,” said J. Peter Kissinger, AAA Foundation president and CEO, at a news conference in Washington, D.C., where the research was released. “We commissioned this study to better understand the ability of legislation to make a difference on teen driver safety. Based on the research results, the impact of GDL programs is highly impressive.”

The seven basic GDL components that were included as criteria in the study are:

• A minimum age of at least 16 years for receiving a learner’s permit.
• A requirement to hold the learner’s permit for at least 6 months before receiving a license that allows any unsupervised driving.
• A requirement for certification of at least 30 hours of supervised driving practice during the learner stage.
• An intermediate stage of licensing with a minimum entry age of at least 16 years and 6 months.
• A nighttime driving restriction for intermediate license holders, beginning no later than 10 p.m.
• A passenger restriction for intermediate license holders, allowing no more than one passenger (except family members).
• A minimum age of 17 years for full, unrestricted licensure.

Note: the above criteria are not the recommended list of GDL provisions but rather the best set of provisions that were in place in a sufficient number of states to support the evaluation.

During the study period, no state had more than five GDL components in effect. As of February 15, 2007, Delaware has all seven components, and Kentucky, Rhode Island, and the District of Columbia have six.

Additional research results include:

• In states with GDL programs that have four of the seven components, 16-year-old drivers were involved in 21 percent fewer fatal crashes and 36 percent fewer crashes with injuries.
• Three-stage GDL programs (in which there is a learning phase where a parent or guardian must supervise the driver, an intermediate phase with GDL provisions such as passenger or nighttime restrictions in effect, followed by full licensure) are more effective at reducing crash rates than GDL programs that do not include three stages of licensure. In the states with three-stage GDL programs, 16-year-old drivers were involved in 11 percent fewer fatal crashes, and 19 percent fewer crashes with injuries.

Currently, 43 states and the District of Columbia have enacted three-stage GDL systems, and all states have some form of GDL. Five states lack intermediate licenses: Arizona, Arkansas, Kansas, Minnesota and North
Dakota. Nebraska and New Hampshire lack mandatory learner’s permits.

The AAA Foundation funded researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health to analyze the impact of GDL programs, implemented in the United States between 1994 and 2004, on the involvement of 16-year-old drivers in fatal crashes and injury crashes, and to identify characteristics common to effective programs.

The report “Nationwide Review of Graduated Driver Licensing,” is available online at www.aaafoundation.org and the project summary can be downloaded here.