A driving license is a ticket to freedom for 16 year-olds but too often the price is steep. Auto crashes cause a third of all teen deaths, and 16 year olds are involved in five times as many fatal accidents as the general public. Now 37 states have instituted some form of graduated licenses. These restrict the times of day a teen can drive, limit the number of persons in the car, require seat belt use and call for complete alcohol abstinence. So far this has resulted in between a 10-20% drop in teen fatalities in three states with the longest history (FL, MI & NC.)

Allan Williams of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety explains that beginners, "have to accumulate a lot of experience before they're able to combine steering with scanning the environment and putting it all together, all at the same time."

Here are a few facts to consider

• Thrill-seeking behavior shows up again and again. Police reports indicate that 36 percent of all 16-year-old drivers in fatal crashes were going too fast for road conditions. This proportion drops with age-only 21 percent of drivers 25-49 years old were reportedly speeding when fatal crashes occurred.

• Forty-one percent of 16-year-old drivers in fatal crashes involved only the teen's vehicle. This is by far the biggest crash type.

• Only 15 percent of all 16-year-old drivers killed had blood alcohol concentrations above 0.10 percent. This compares with 32 percent for older teenagers (17-19 years old), and 53 percent for drivers 25-49 years old.

• Many of the 16 year-olds who die in crashes aren't using belts. In fact, higher proportions of teenagers in general donât use belts compared with older drivers.

Sixty-three percent of teenage passenger deaths occurred when another teenager was driving, and 16-year-olds are particularly implicated. Fatal crashes involving drivers this age are much more likely to occur with three or more occupants in the vehicle- and the occupants are usually other teens.

Training and education programs can help teens learn driving skills, but they don't produce safer drivers. Teenagers naturally tend to rebel against adult standards and regulations. Peer pressure influences them much more than advice from adults.

Teenagers are slower than adults to perceive danger, and when they do, they often don't relate it to themselves. They think they're immortal.

A promising approach to the problem of teenage crash deaths and injuries involves controlling progression to unrestricted driving, lifting controls one by one until a young driver "graduates" to full licensure. The key is to influence when beginners drive and with whom. Restrictions typically include limits on teen passengers, night driving prohibitions, and requirements that beginners drive only with older, experienced drivers. The blood alcohol concentration specified for teens may also be lower than for others.

Graduated licensing began in New Zealand in 1987. It's effective, and similar systems were adopted in two Canadian provinces. Now graduated licensing is attracting U.S. interest.

"A lot of people think of the restrictions as inhibiting...but I like to think of graduated licensing in terms of protection," says Herb M. Simpson of the Traffic Injury Research Foundation of Canada.

Driving is a far more complex task than most 16 year-olds realize. Williams adds that "handling a car responsibly takes more than mastering the skills. It takes the maturity."

Restricting initial driving to the daytime is part of creating time to learn. It's not just that night driving is more difficult, it also tends to be recreational. Graduated licensing introduces night driving only after experience is gained during the day.