Teenage Driver Decals Help Cut Car Accidents in New Jersey

Tue, 11/14/2017 - 9:22 pm by Kirsten Rincon

Four years ago, New Jersey introduced a rather unconventional measure in an effort to reduce the number of car accidents involving teen drivers.

Four years ago, New Jersey introduced a rather unconventional measure in an effort to reduce the number of car accidents involving teen drivers. The state implemented a new law that required drivers between the ages of 16 and 20 holding a learner’s permit or intermediate license to attach a reflective decal on both license plates of the vehicle they are driving, so that law enforcement agencies could identify novice drivers more easily and make sure that they are obeying the Graduated Driver’s License (GDL) restrictions.

The law, the went into effect in May 2010, was named “Kyleigh’s Law”, in memory Kyleigh D’Alessio, a teenager who was killed 3 years ago while riding in a car driven by another teenager, and it has been surrounded by a lot of controversies ever since, being criticized by parents of teenage drivers, arguing that it would lead to police profiling and help predators target teens more easily. But, a new study suggests that since the state enacted the decal provision, the number of teen crashes has dropped significantly, which means Kyleigh’s Law achieved its main goal.

According to the study conducted by a group of researchers at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP), which was published in American Journal of Preventive Medicine, road crashes involving drivers younger than 21 dropped by 9.5% in the first two years after the decal provision took effect. The researchers analyzed crash rates among learner and intermediate teen drivers between 2006 and 2010, and compared it against monthly rates of crashes that occurred between 2010 and 2012. They found that there were almost 3,200 fewer crashes in the first two year of the implementation of the decal, and the number of teen drivers ticketed for not following the GDL restrictions went up by 14 percent.

Crash rates declined post decal

“Decal provisions now have the support of science. The provision may encourage safer driving behaviors, both among teens and other drivers sharing the road with them,” says lead author Allison Curry, PhD, MPH, director of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the Center for Injury Research and Prevention at CHOP.

However, the number of teen drivers using decals has been quite low, according to the study. Only about 30 percent of learner permit or intermediate license holders were using them, and police 2,370 tickets for violating the decal provision in 2013 alone.

In New Jersey, there are over 170,000 intermediate drivers on the road each day, and they are involved in over 10 percent of all car crashes, which is why law enforcement authorities expect this provision to have a significant impact on overall traffic safety. New Jersey is the first state to implement teen driver decals, but similar bills have already been proposed in Massachusetts and New York, as well.