Kyleigh's Law is a recent piece of legislation, passed unanimously by New Jersey's state legislature, that attempts to address the dangers associated with young and inexperienced motorists. Unfortunately, several of the measures outlined by the law are controversial in nature and run the risk of creating worse problems than those they were designed to address.
Kyleigh's Law establishes the following:
- Creates a new "provisional license" document for new drivers. First-time drivers must first apply for and obtain a special learner's permit, which they must hold for at least one full year before receiving the provisional license.
- Imposes a new restriction on drivers who hold the special learner's permit, making it unlawful for them to drive between 11:00 PM and 5:00 AM.
- As always, the driver with a special learner’s permit can only drive with a supervising passenger. Imposes a new requirement that the supervising passenger and the permit holder must live at the same address. Also imposes a new requirement that, other than the permit holder and the supervising passenger, there be no more than one additional passenger in the car. (This passenger's residence does not matter.)
- Require that the parent or guardian of a person under the age of 18 receive an informational brochure which clearly sets forth the special rules that apply to a holder of an examination permit or a provisional license.
- Require the chief administrator to issue an orange hangtag or sticker to be displayed when a vehicle is being driven by the holder of a provisional license.
- Change the threshold for mandatory license suspension from two or more motor vehicle offenses to any motor vehicle offense.
- Take away the right to plea bargaining in court when issued a ticket that would give a teen driver 1 infraction point on their license.
- Increase the mandatory license suspension from three months to five months for any moving violation on a provisional license.
Some of the most obvious concerns:
- The law facilitates profiling by law enforcement, discriminating against new drivers who happen to be under the age of 21 by subjecting them to greater scrutiny (i.e. more frequent traffic stops, etc.). Treating our children like criminals hardly seems like an appropriate way to reduce traffic accidents.
- The law is based exclusively on group membership (new drivers under 21 years old), without any consideration of actual behavior. Young people must put an orange hang tag on their car to identify themselves, but someone repeatedly convicted of reckless driving suffers no such imposition as long as they're 21 years old or older. If we're going to start forcing risky drivers to mark their vehicles for easy identification, wouldn't it make sense to write a law that actually tries to accomplish that?
- If you see an orange hang tag it means you're looking at a vehicle that belongs to someone between 18 and 20 years old. It also means they are traveling around town without direct supervision, since the hang tag wouldn't be needed if mom were driving. A law that makes it easy to identify which vehicles belong to inexperienced and unsupervised teenagers might prove helpful to people other than law enforcement -- the very last people that our laws should be designed to help.