A New Way to Identify Teen Drivers

Teen drivers are easily recognized by New Jersey police officers, thanks to a new license plate feature.

Stricter licensing provisions and identification programs have lead to a decrease in accidents for teen drivers.

When out patrolling, police officers rely on not just equipment, but also on visual clues that someone is breaking the law. In New Jersey, they now have the assistance of a new license plate feature to help them identify if it’s a new teen driver that is the one breaking the law.

And from the statistics, not only are cops issuing out more tickets thanks to this feature, they have also possibly prevented a high number of accidents.

How Are Teen Drivers Identified in New Jersey?

In the state of New Jersey, drivers that are new to the road have to place a reflective decal sticker on both the front and back license plates on the vehicle they drive. This sticker is not meant to identify them to other drivers, but to give police officers the heads up that this driver is subject to graduated driver licensing provisions.

These provisions include that teens are only allowed a permit when they turn 16, and they are not allowed to have a driver’s license until they have reached 17. In addition, they are restricted from driving after 11p.m. and are limited to the number of people (specifically other teens) they are allowed to have in the car while they are driving.

Statistics Tied to this New Jersey Decal

Because these decals allow police officers automatically know that the driver is subject to graduated driver licensing provisions, they can quickly identify if the driver is violating any of the provisions. Being able to identify these teen drivers quickly has worked, as there has been a 14 percent increase in the number of citations to teen drivers that are in violation of the provisions, per a study done by the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP).

CHOP also found that there was a 9 percent decrease in police-reported crashes for this same driving group. So it is looking like these stricter driving laws and graduated licensing provisions for teen drivers really do make a difference.

Teen Drivers in Other States Beware?

For those teen drivers that are laughing at their counterparts in New Jersey at the moment, don’t laugh too loud. Several other states are already looking into using these same decals to identify the teen drivers in their states, as well.

This last summer the federal government has also decided to step in, and will now be awarding grants to individual states that implement stronger graduated driver licensing provisions for their teen drivers (onlineautoinsurance.com).