> speaking of cars, DC is trying to put into place new license restrictions. permit at 16, have to keep it for 6 months. provisional license at 16.5, can drive alone at day, only carry family members in car. full license at 17, but can only have one non-family member in car until 18. AGGGGHHHHH!!!! according to my friend and her dad, who know a lot about dc politics, they won't be able to implememt it until January of 2001, so i'll have my license by then. God bless the grandfather clause.
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> uni"speaking of cars..."peg

We have something similar implemented last year in California. The basic thing is that at 16 you can't:
A. Carry passengers in the car under 25 or whatever (may be an exception for family members) for the first 6 months you have the license and
B. Drive between like midnight and 6 am for the first year.

Both restrictions go away when you turn 18 and get a non-provisional license (so that if you get your license one week from your 18th birthday you can't carry people for a week). I don't know that it's made us any safer and it created quite a bit of controversey (and certainly I would be hopping mad if I turned 16 and couldn't carry people) and all in all seems rather worthless to me. I have heard that if we really wanted to increase safety, the number one thing to do would be to force people in cars to wear helmets just as motorcyclists are. Makes sense to me, but as far as I know there's no legislation moving towards this. My one big concern with traffic laws is that so many of them seem to be for show (or revenue, as is evidenced by the insanely low 65 MPH speed limits on freeways) rather than actual safety...

Stephen