Reinventing Safety 365 to make young drivers in NJ safer?
If you’ve ever driven to New Jersey, the parkway is a familiar road. To young drivers, all roads hold more danger than someone who has been behind the wheel for years but toll roads are slightly different. At one moment, traffic can be flowing smoothly and then another, it’s stop and go traffic. Many times, toll roads consist of multiple lanes with cars traveling at high speeds. Switching lanes without properly being aware of where you are located can be a disaster waiting to happen. New Jersey official recognize but also know that every year, more young drivers are put onto the highway without proper knowledge of operating their vehicle on a toll road. This is why they have developed “Reinventing Safety 365.”
What is Reinventing Safety 365?
This is a program that New Jersey decided was important because young drivers need to be aware of the difference between driving on a neighborhood street and driving on a large toll road. There will be an increased presence of state troopers on the parkway as well as use of educational methods. Officials are going to try to tap into the social media platform to connect with young drivers.
By going this route, hopefully more young people can get the important information but will consider it more legitimate. Just because information is important doesn’t always mean someone will listen to it. And this isn’t necessarily aimed at brand new drivers such as those 16-18 years of age. Between January and September of this past year, there were 16 deaths on the parkway, 11 of which were people in their 20’s. So this program is aimed at that age group as well.
New Jersey’s Young Drivers
Using social media is going to help advance this program but that one source of information can’t do it all. Turnpike officials are hoping that they can develop partnerships with local colleges as well. If they can distribute information and make sure that students are getting safety tips in a variety of methods, the effective it will be. One of the advantages of partnering with colleges is the amount of time that they to expose the student to safe driving practices as well. Many students attend a four-year university and may even be coming out of state to do this. If New Jersey colleges can work with highway officials to make New Jersey’s roads safer, those practices might just trickle back to a student’s home state.
Targeting Young Drivers
Highway officials are going to rely heavily on police officers to help crackdown on irresponsible, illegal road behavior but in New Jersey, it should be easier to spot a young driver than in other places. New Jersey has what is called a graduated licensing system. With the program drivers have to go through several phases of licensing before getting a full unrestricted license. It is apparent that someone is in a graduated licensing program by two things: their actual license and a car decal.
The GDL Program
In New Jersey, there are three different phases that a new teen driver must go through: the early bird road, meant for 16 year old drivers, the young adult road, meant for driver 17-21, and the adult road, meant for drivers 21 and older. Each phase comes with its own restrictions and is meant to provide the driver with a gradual approach to driving. It is assumed that once a new driver has had time to perfect basic driving skills, then they are ready to move on to the next level. It is very dangerous to let a new driver onto a toll if they have only been driving for a week so there are certain restrictions like driving at night and a limited number of passengers placed on GDL licenses.
But how do police if someone is a young driver? If the only noticeable way young drivers could be identified was by their licenses, police wouldn’t know until after they had already pulled them over. But young drivers in New Jersey also have special decals that are placed on their vehicles so that it is obvious from the outside the driver is not as experienced as another on the road. This may seem to some as if young drivers might have a certain
stigma attached to them but this system isn’t being used to unfairly monitor them. It has been proven time and time again that car accidents are the main cause of death in teenagers so this type of licensing and recognition is for their own safety.
Also, if teens know that state troopers are looking out for their vehicles, it could make them less apt to engage in risky driving behavior for several reasons. With a GDL, any young driver who gets a point carrying offense cannot bargain in court and will receive the designated penalty. This is discouragement in itself but with a young driver carrying an offense, Mom and Dad’s insurance is likely to increase two fold. It’s already very expensive to insure a young driver because of their inexperience but add a ticket to the mix and some young drivers might rather ride a bike than face the wrath of their parents. New Jersey had already made concerted efforts in protecting its young drivers and making they grow into educated adults. Implementing ‘Reinventing Safety 365’ is just another step in the right direction for turnpike travel.
