Driver's license delay for teens?

A European model is getting a cool reception from teens in the Yuba-Sutter region.

An insurance institute's recommendation to boost the driving age to 17 or 18 notes most countries in Europe don't allow driver's licenses until youths reach the age of 18, which Alexis Grove of Marysville High School suggests won't mean much here.

"It would be a pretty big uproar," Grove, 16, the student body president, said of teens likely reaction to delaying the driving age. "I don't think it's a very good idea."

Neither does Shonna Davis, 17, student body vice-president. Youths not being allowed to drive when they reach the age of 16?

"I don't think they'd be very happy," Davis said.

Lindhurst High School student body president Cathy Manion said most teens anticipate driving at 16.

"I can't imagine them having to wait another two years," Manion said.

Moreover, she said, a license at 16 allows "two years to feel comfortable driving before leaving for college," Manion said.

The Virginia-based Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, whose report was presented Tuesday to the Governors Highway Safety Association in Scottsdale, Ariz., acknowledges the later driving age is no crowd-pleaser among adolescents.

"You can hear a pin drop," their report quotes one state lawmaker saying of what follows after telling a class full of 15-year-olds about support for raising the driving age.

Russ Rader, a spokesman for the nonprofit institute supported by auto insurers, said that "teens see driving at 16 as a right rather than a privilege."

But Rader noted that motor vehicle accidents are the leading cause of teen deaths. The report concludes that later licensing would "substantially reduce crashes involving teen drivers."

"We have a major public health problem," he said. "The goal here is to save lives."

Melanie Oakes, spokeswoman for the Yuba County Sheriff's Department, said measures such as seat belt requirements and stronger penalties and enforcement for DUI's have helped to reduce traffic deaths among all drivers in recent decades.

Capt. Jim Young of the Yuba-Sutter office of the California Highway Patrol agreed that driving is safer.

"The public education campaigns," Young said, "have had a definite impact."

Oakes said the last fatal accident involving a teenager was in October 2007 when an 18-year-old struck a tree by Yuba College, she said. An 18-year-old died in a February 2005 accident.

Oakes said motor vehicle accidents in Yuba County since 2000 have taken the lives of a dozen youths between the ages of 18 and 21 and two 17-year-olds. No one aged 16 died in a vehicle accident in that period, she said.

"It appears," said Oakes, "18-21 is just as high a risk group if not more so."

Contact Appeal-Democrat reporter Ryan McCarthy at 749-4707 or at rmccarthy@appeal democrat.com