Nebraska needs to crack down on issuing fines and punishments for younger drivers who break traffic laws.
Drivers under 21 are often riskier, but can often get away with more. Police are quick to issue a warning for speeding, and most offenders can go to a STOP class for a traffic violation to get the incident off their record and to help insurance go down afterwards. The classes are meant to help drivers learn from the incidents and not repeat them again.
I hate to be the one to tell the state of Nebraska, but this process is not working. The reality is that cops and judges need to stop the soft approach to younger drivers. If they do not learn at a young age that they cannot get away with accidents and traffic violations, then they will continue to try to get away with them as an adult.
Recently, Omaha has had a few accidents that led to serious injury or even deaths of multiple teenagers. In one case, it was due to a traffic accident. The issue becomes that the driver gets all charges dropped or only has to do community service in those types of cases. No one wants to drop heavy charges on young drivers.
The blunt reality is that the deaths of young drivers in many cases are motor vehicle homicide. The state of Nebraska recognizes motor vehicle homicide as any death caused by a vehicle that was unintentional. The news and the police simply call it an accident, because that is what is socially acceptable. If it were a 30-year-old who crashed a car that led to the death of someone, journalists and police would be quick to state motor vehicle homicide.
I am not saying to throw the book at the drivers. They are inexperienced drivers but in almost all incidents, they were driving recklessly. The worst is when people in the car are drinking. These are preventable deaths that do not need to happen. Actions need to be taken against recklessly driving. One thing that the department can start doing is suspending licenses. In fact, part of the Nebraska legislature states that a driver cannot drive a car for between one and 15 years depending on the situation.
Taking the license away will teach a lesson and also make drivers earn it back. If a young driver is in a serious accident, he or she should have to retake the driving test in order to get their license back.
The test is another problem. In Nebraska, you can miss up to 30 questions on the written exam and still get your license. That is a scary fact considering that is a good bit of information someone does not need to know in order to obtain a driver’s license. The DMV should change that requirement so only a few questions are allowed to be missed.
Another problem is how schools address vehicle safety. Schools no longer offer much in the way of a driver’s education class. Instead, students have to go someplace else and pay money or have a parent teach them. A class needs to be dedicated to the safety of driving. It does not have to be a driver’s education course, but rather why rules should be followed. A good portion needs to be dedicated to drinking and driving because that is a big contributor in fatal accidents.
In short, there are a variety of cracks in the driver’s education system that can lead to inexperienced teens driving recklessly. Nebraska should crack down more on these drivers, rather than be lenient, in order to instill good driving practices from the moment these teens receive their licenses.