Report Has High Praise for California Traffic Safety Laws

California has some of the strictest traffic safety laws in the country, and has laws that help keep teenage drivers, motorcyclists and children safer and prevent drunk and distracted driving accidents. That information comes from a new report that rated all the 50 states based on whether the state had passed 15 safety laws.

The report was released by Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety, and has been released every year since 1989. This year’s report was the 25th report in the series, and this year too, California fared very well.

Every year, Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety uses a rating system to determine whether states have implemented 15 laws relating to seatbelt use, child restraint use, drunk driving, distracted driving, and graduated driver’s licensing programs. States are rated based on how many of these laws they have implemented. States that have implemented most of the laws are given a “green” rating, states that have not done so well are given a “yellow” rating, while states that have failed badly at passing important laws, are given the lowest “red” rating.

California has been rated green commending it for its performance, and the state has managed to maintain its rating for several years in a row now. According to the report, the state has passed nine safety laws, and is only missing several graduated driver licensing program laws that could make the state even safer for teenage drivers.

According to the report, the establishment of 16 as the minimum age for getting a learners permit for teenagers in California, nighttime driving, passenger and cell phone restrictions for teenage drivers, as well as the setting of 18 as the minimum age to get an unrestricted license, could help California improve on its traffic safety record.