By Rachel Lutz, Columnist
In my senior year of high school, I was really lucky, and my parents bought a third car for our family that I was to use, with the understanding that I would share it with my brother, who was a sophomore at the time.
Now my brother is set to get his license in a few weeks, and he makes the cutoff date of the new drivers to be affected by Kyleigh's Law. Kyleigh's Law is a new law signed into action by the brilliant Chris Christie designed to protect new provisional license holders.
On a New Jersey provisional license, there are certain driving restrictions, such as number of passengers allowed and certain times that you cannot drive during. While half of my brother's grade is off the hook, the other half is not so lucky. Now, because of this new law, these drivers will be forced to display a red sticker on their license plates to identify themselves as young drivers to police.
My brother would be okay, and his age would fool you if you didn't know he was younger than me. But what about the girls his age that make the deadline? They become easy targets for predators. And I know the law doesn't specifically include me, but it still affects me. What if I forget (as I inevitably will) to remove the sticker? I look even younger than my brother does, but being the older sibling, I have a later curfew, lawfully and parentally. So what if I'm followed somewhere, or getting gas or something, and something terrible happens? Will Rachel's Law need to be the one that abolishes Kyleigh's? It shouldn't take tragedy to create laws, but unfortunately, that's usually the way it works.
I realize that a lot of 17 year old drivers don't follow the provisional license requirements, but Kyliegh wasn't following them, and then some. Kyleigh wasn't even driving, but another provisional license holder was, and there were four people in the car. There are rumors that the driver was even drunk, but I couldn't find evidence to support or deny that. I'm pretty sure that a measly sticker isn't going to stop seemingly invincible juniors and seniors in high school from piling four or five of their friends in the car to go to the mall or the beach.
However, the sticker is supposed to increase their ticket prices and fees if they are caught with an infraction and a sticker. But, again, if that sticker is on my car when I'm driving, what's to stop an officer from slapping me with a more expensive ticket than a regular adult would have gotten? Just because my license says I'm 19 now doesn't mean an officer would believe me; people have fake IDs everywhere.
Thankfully for these drivers, these stickers can come off after one year of being on a provisional license, when they graduate to a basic driver's license. But who's to say that the damage won't already be done by then?