Task force steers toward new limits for teen drivers

By Luther Turmelle, North Bureau Chief

HARTFORD — A task force on teen driving on Friday sent a series of recommendations to the office of Gov. M. Jodi Rell that it hopes will prevent fatal car accidents similar to those involving young people in the past year.

The most significant recommendations made by the Governor’s Task Force on Teen Driving are:

Increasing the amount of time that new teenage drivers are prohibited from having anyone but family members as passengers from the six months after they get their licenses to a full year.

Violations involving passenger restrictions, speeding, cell phone and text messaging now punishable through a ticket and fine would carry a 30-day license suspension for the first offense. Subsequent violations would carry longer suspensions.

Rolling back the current midnight curfew for young drivers to 11 p.m. Teenagers going to and from work as well as from school events would continue to be exempt from the curfew, as they are under the current law.

Asking all of the state’s public schools to hold meetings with 11th- and 12th-graders within the next two months to educate them on current driving restrictions for 16- and 17-year-olds as well as to review the changes that Rell will ask lawmakers to address in the 2008 legislative session.

State Department of Motor Vehicles Commissioner Robert Ward, co-chairman of the task force, said Rell will review the eight recommendations and present the ones she supports to the General Assembly next month.

Ward called driving deaths among 16- and 17-year-olds “a serious public health issue.”

“It’s a unique opportunity to lay this out to the legislature and to the public,” Ward said following the task force’s meeting at the state’s Legislative Office Building. “We need parents to get onboard with these resolutions as well as the young drivers themselves.”

Rell said in a statement that she is confident that the recommendations “will go a long way in ensuring that we ... will take a more aggressive, proactive approach to prevent fatal traffic accidents involving teen drivers.”

The public will have a chance to comment on the recommendations during a series of public meetings, Ward said.

The first is scheduled for Thursday night at Town Hall in Rocky Hill, with a meeting planned for an undetermined location in the New Haven area sometime in February, he said.

“Some parents may not agree with what we’ve proposed, but polls and surveys indicate that the vast majority of parents are looking to us to give them some support,” Ward said. “I think many parents are scared to death when their kids get behind the wheel for the first time.”

Ward said the plan that calls for replacing fines with license suspensions for moving violations among teenage drivers is modeled after actions taken by Massachusetts lawmakers.

“There has been a huge increase in license suspensions in Massachusetts that are attributable to that (change),” Ward said. “Teens there are getting the message.”

The recommendations that the task force forwarded to Rell represent short-term proposals, Ward said. The panel will continue meeting to craft a series of longer-term proposals that are due on the governor’s desk in June, he said.