One reason I supported Martin Heinrich was that he didn’t back down from the sudden accelerations that the Obama administration started in the past two years. These are not just the big-ticket items like health care and financial reform. They are long-delayed items like the Lilly Ledbetter Act, which makes it harder to discriminate against women in the workplace, and a law making it harder for credit card companies to surprise you with sudden interest rate increases. They are laws that give our college students hope and opportunities like the revamp of the student loan program and the increase in size of AmeriCorps and other service projects.
Rachel Maddow mentioned these on her TV program the night before the election and I agree. The Democrats could easily have kept their power dry, hoping not to offend anyone, but instead they chose to go for it. They used the political opening created by the 2006 & 2008 elections to enact some truly landmark legislation. The impact of that legislation will not be felt for years from now—but if we can hold the line—there will be a tremendous benefit.
The same is true at the state level. I’ve often fought official opponents to children’s’ and public health protection who say that state regulation won’t do anything but enlarge government and impede individual freedom. That was the argument against changing the system of licensing young drivers back in 1999, when I and a number of traffic safety advocates (including the Automobile Association) said that the way to bring down the high crash rate for teens was to make them spend more time behind the wheel –practicing with an adult-- before giving them a full license. With much difficulty, we prevailed, and even got then Gov. Garry Johnson to sign the bill.
And now it’s beginning to pay off, eleven years later. Even the SF New Mexican, which railed against the “Nanny State" (I was the chief Nanny), now admits it was wrong in this article from a few days ago. Here’s the article…
Graduated-license laws help cut teen driving fatalities
The New Mexican
Sunday, October 31, 2010 - 10/28/10
We're not major proponents of nanny government — and we're longtime supporters of teenagers' rights and responsibilities. But turn-of-the-century proposals to make teens work their way into adult driving privileges had plenty of appeal — the biggest being the chance that such an approach would save lives.
And it has: The U.S. Centers for Disease Control, the people who keep all kinds of grim statistics, reported recently that fatalities among teen drivers are down by a long ways: Between 2004 and 2008, they had fallen by one-third.
There might be other reasons for that encouraging news: safer cars, maybe even sky-high gas prices. But the feds give most of the credit to what are now known as graduated-license laws.
New Mexico was among the earlier states to impose rules on under-18 drivers. We made licensing a three-stage process:
- Six-month instructional permits, for which youngsters 15 and older, and their parents, must apply, and which involve tests and state-approved driver instruction, as well as 50 hours of supervised driving practice, among other requirements — including driving only when there's someone 21 or older on board.
- Provisional licenses, which depend on compliance with the instruction-period rules and passing a road-skills exam. For the next year, unless there's someone 21 or older along for the ride, the holder can't have more than one other kid in the car who isn't an immediate family member. And, with few exceptions, no driving between midnight and 5 a.m.
- Full licenses come only after completion of the two earlier stages — with clean driving records.
That's a far cry from what middle-aged Americans had to do for a driver's license — and for the many super-responsible teens we know, the requirements might be onerous.
But they're working — in fact, in places like New York and New Jersey, where the rules are even stricter, the fatality rates are lower. And in Wyoming, where kids are behind the wheel earlier than nearly anywhere, the teen fatality rate is highest.
That makes graduated licenses look pretty good — and makes a strong argument for demanding 'em nationally.
Politically, they might not be popular — and who wants to be the spoil-sport who ramrods them through a legislature?...
The moral of the story is —like the sign says—Don’t Give up….Change Takes Time in Santa Fe as in Washington. We might look like “spoil sports” now, but give it a few years.
And as the leadership changes in the Statehouse, we hope that some common sense will prevail and not all reforms will be thrown out the window. Some of them might save lives and money in the long run.
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