Teens need more behind-the-wheel training

The Jackson Township Council has introduced a new way to help police identify young Jackson drivers on the road. They are going to provide stickers to young drivers to be placed on the back of their cars to let the police know that they are provisional drivers so they can keep a close eye on them. This is the way the Jackson council looks at this idea and I guess in a perfect world maybe this would work, but let's look at this with a little bit of common sense.

There is now a big, bright identification sticker on the back of my 17-year-old's car so that now when my son or daughter walks out of a store at night they can be followed by some psychotic predator who will now be able to identify not only that my child is a new driver, but also that this is a 17-year-old child and that just by following that huge beacon attached to the back window of the car, this psycho can find out where my child lives and works.

Identifying a specific class of drivers is discriminatory and will not help our young drivers in any way and may, in fact, hurt them.

We are all concerned about the amount of accidents that our kids are involved in and would like to find a way to prevent these accidents from happening, but this idea of stickers clearly can have equally devastating effects on the kids.

As a lifelong resident and graduate of the Jackson school system, I remember when I was in high school we had a driver's education class that not only required a certain amount of hours of classroom studying, but also had an actual driving range with a street and traffic light.

The school also had a driver's education vehicle on which the students were trained how to drive on the course on school grounds and after a certain amount of hours of driving on that school course they were then permitted to drive on the public roads.

All this took place during school hours and always with a certified licensed driver's education teacher in the car. Before any student was permitted to take the state driver's education test, we had to pass the school program first and get a certificate.

We need to get our state legislators to fund this type of program to ensure that young drivers get more hours of road experience before driving alone. Only more driving experience will [prevent] the tragedies that have become all too familiar to us.

Whereas the sticker idea may sound good, it could have devastating effects and I hereby ask the council to reconsider this proposal.

Michael J. Kafton

Jackson