FORT WAYNE – For a teenager, waiting an extra five months for a driver’s license can seem interminable.

But experts say that every day – no matter how those days may drag for a 16-year old – that pushes back a driver’s license for a teen dramatically reduces the chance the teen will be in a fatal accident.

“We know that delaying the permit age by a year can reduce fatal crashes … by 13 percent,” said Russ Rader, spokesman for the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. “Even a six-month delay can reduce fatal crashes by as much as 7 percent.”

As of July 1, the minimum age for a driver’s license in Indiana increased to 16 years and 6 months, up from 16 years and 1 month.

Experts say even that five-month delay will prevent some teens from dying on the roads.

“We know that graduated licensing, the idea of restricting teen licensing, has reduced crashes,” Rader said.

Two decades ago, a driver’s license was a driver’s license, and when you got it as a teen you had the same rights and privileges as someone in his 40s. No more.

Graduated licenses impose restrictions on young drivers, from cell phone usage to nighttime driving to who may be a passenger in the car.

In Indiana now, teens cannot drive after 10 p.m. for the first six months after getting their license. Even after that, until they’re 18 they cannot drive by themselves after 11 p.m. weekdays and 1 a.m. on weekends. They cannot use a cell phone while driving until they’re 18. There are restrictions on when they can have passengers with them.

The reason it gets harder and harder for teens to enjoy the freedom of the open road is stark: Per mile driven, drivers ages 16 to 19 are four times more likely than older drivers to crash, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Even more stark are the numbers showing graduated licensing – teens, feel free to call it “oppression” if you must – works in preventing crashes and deaths.

“It sucks,” 15-year-old Max Marin said. “But it makes sense.”

Hits and misses

Graduated licensing began appearing in the United States in the mid-1990s, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. And in 1999, Indiana’s rate of young drivers in fatal collisions per 100,000 licensed young drivers was at 75.1, above the national rate of 64.6.

Since then, as both Indiana and states across the nation have imposed graduated license requirements, the rates have dropped dramatically: By 2007, Indiana’s rate had dropped by nearly one-third to 52.4, according to state data, while the national rate dropped to 52.8, per 100,000 licensed young drivers.

Despite the gains made, the number of teens killed behind the wheel is still appalling: According to the CDC, car crashes are the leading cause of death for U.S. teens. In Indiana, according to data compiled by the Indiana Criminal Justice Institute, for every 10,000 licensed 16- and 17-year-olds, 19.6 were involved in a fatal crash. That rate is almost six times greater than for 18- to 20-year-olds and more than seven times greater than any other age group, the Institute said.

Marin said he understands the push to delay teens’ driving.

“With the whole texting-while-driving thing and everything, it’s dangerous for everybody,” Marin said. “But it’s bad for the ones who are good (drivers).”

For Marin, who turns 16 in September, it was one more disappointment.

“I was like, ‘Oh, man, I’m gonna get a job this summer. I’m gonna get a car,’ ” he said. “I couldn’t get a job, I couldn’t get a car, and now I can’t get my license.”

Lois Gerardot, one of the owners of the Safeway Driving Institute in Fort Wayne, said she was glad to see the new restrictions added July 1 but wishes the state would have done more.

“We just feel like they could have went a little farther than this,” Gerardot said.

One of the biggest failures in the change, she said, was that teens now cannot get a learner’s permit until they are 15 years old and 6 months, instead of just 15. By leaving it at 15 while raising the license age, she said, teens could have gotten another six months of valuable, supervised driving time before they get their license.

And though she admits her bias, she would also like to see drivers education courses required, or at least subsidized so more teens could afford them.

“We’ve had examiners at the license branch tell us they can tell which teens have had drivers ed and which have not,” Gerardot said. “When the examiners tell you they see a marked difference, that tells us we’re doing a good job.”

But drivers education can also be a detriment, the Insurance Institute’s Rader said, if states use it incorrectly.

“Drivers ed is helpful in teaching those basic skills, but unfortunately it becomes a crutch where it’s relied on as a safety program for laws allowing teens to get licenses earlier,” Rader said. “So in many states, drivers ed is counterproductive because it allows teens to get licenses sooner.”

And study after study shows that – regardless of whether a teen has taken a drivers ed course – the sooner a teen is behind the wheel, the higher the risk for a crash.

Gerardot agrees to a point.

Part of the problem, she said, is that despite many searches, she has never found a study examining the effect of drivers ed on crash rates. She believes that such a study would show that it does reduce crashes. That being said, drivers ed should not be used as an excuse to lower the licensing age, she said.

“The statistics are correct,” she said. “Obviously, the older a driver is, the less risk they’re going to take.”

Right now, she said, there is little incentive to take drivers ed at all: With drivers ed, you can get a license at age 16 and 6 months, without it you qualify at age 16 and 9 months. Little wonder only about a third of Hoosier teens take drivers ed.

“If we could get that number up, we would see a lot less accidents,” Gerardot said. “Until it’s affordable for everybody or we make it mandatory, a lot of people feel they can just wait that extra three months.”

dstockman@jg.net