McGuinty Government Proposes New Rules For Novice Drivers And Tougher

Many people are hoping that these new changes to the graduated licensing system will improve road safety.

The Graduated Licensing System does work...14 years after this program began, fatalities and injuries among teen drivers have declined by almost 25%.

These improvements propsed has caused anger among "young" drivers...when browsing around facebook, checking out groups spefically "young drivers" there are a lot of posting showing young people outraged by the proposed changes, and what seems apparent from the posts, is how the Government defines "young" or "teen" the category places anyone between the ages of 16-21. Well many people past 19 don't associate themselves as a teen any longer, and this seems to have struck a cord for many who are posting messages out there.

The other overwhelming responses have to do with passenger restrictions. While speaking with one mother yesterday, she indicated that many times this is how her daughter gets to soccer practice and it is really going to put more cars back onto the roadways...?!? Perhaps the legislation should restrict the number of passengers after a certain hour of the day...maybe evening hours...when the partying is likely to occur. Having said that statistic are a series of facts, and unfortunately the facts show that young people do crash more often when there are more then 1 passenger in the vehicle. It all comes down to distractions...'Young' drivers simply do not have the experience to handle too many distractions while they are driving...that is not to say that older people are really any better in handling distractions, simply we have a depth of knowledge of the consequences of those distractions, and do tend to behave with slightly more caution. Young people just simply do not have the consequences ingrained as a real possibility.

I will be going through the new legislation and creating several posts over the next few days to wade through all of these new changes.