ABSTRACT
In 2015, teen drivers, the crashes they have, and programs meant to reduce these crashes were continually in the news headlines in the United States. Although young driver crash risks have been a concern for several years, they have not always received this amount of attention. Prior to the mid-1990s, teen driver crashes were not a major concern of the public, policy makers, or the research community. It was generally assumed that driver education programs dealt with the needs of young beginning drivers. This complacency quickly eroded in the 1990s as researchers and traffic safety practitioners began pointing to the high crash rate of young teen drivers and making the case for a different approach to licensing young drivers. This “new” approach-graduated driver licensing (GDL)—had been developed two decades earlier (Waller, 1976; Waller & Reinfurt, 1973). However, policy makers cited a variety of concerns and declined to embrace the new approach (Waller, 2003). The idea was resurrected in the early 1990s as researchers began looking more closely at young driver crash rates and sharing the troubling findings with road safety practitioners and policy makers. This chapter addresses young driver licensing in the United States during the past two decades, focusing heavily on GDL and its effects.
