Young Drivers' Safety  Monday 26 November 2001 12:00AM (view
full episode)  Motor vehicle accidents are the biggest killers
for young people. In America, several states have tried to cut
down the accident rates by introducing graduated driver
licensing systems.   Norman Swan: While heart disease is what's
most likely to kill you and me, the big killer in adolescence
and the early 20s, especially in boys, is the motor car. Just
putting the two together, adolescence and driving, is enough to
strike cold terror in the heart of most parents.  In America,
several States have tried to combat the problem of controlling
young people at the wheel of a lethal weapon, by introducing
what they call graduated licence schemes. These are where the
young person has to go through quite a lot of hoops before
getting a full licence.  It's far more than anything we do in
Australia, but a set of papers published recently show a
significant reduction in road deaths after the Americans
introduced this system.  One of the studies ca