The state of Ohio just added a teenage driving law that states that a teenager between that ages of 16 and 17 can have one passenger that is not a relative. Any addtional passengers are only allowed IF they have a passenger that is a relative.
Does that relative have to hold a valid Ohio state driver license?
I do not know how Ohio laws differ from Illinois, but I just received my daughter’s driving info from her drivers’ ed class today, and it says this:
“Newly licensed may have only one person under the age of 21 in the automobile while they are driving for the first six months of having their license or their 18th birthday. This rule does not apply if the passengers are brothers/sisters and/or immediate family.”
Anecdotally, a friend of my daughter’s got her license last year and was allowed to drive with her younger sister and my then-15-year old daughter in the car at the same time. So I think it means any number of siblings, plus one un-related passenger, regardless of the license status of any passengers. (This paper also notes that the number of passengers, even if related, may not exceed the number of working seatbelts in the car.)
I am so confused by this new law, as is my daughter.
She is 16 and only has her temperary license at the moment which means she has to have a driver 21 or older with a valid Ohio state license in the passenger seat with her at all times but with no limit to other passengers in the back seat other than what the car is allowed per seat belt.
That said…
The new law…
As long as she has passed both the written and the driving exam and has a valid license she is allowed at the age between 16 and 17 only one passenger in the car while she is driving.
Any addtional passengers are allowed as long as a relative is in the car.
She agrues that the “relative” does NOT need to have a valid license.
I argue they do or the law makes no sense!
In other words that means that great, great aunt Martha from BFE with no valid license from BFE or any other great land can be a “relative” and ride in the car with 4/5/6 other teenagers and it is legal as long as the driver is a) has a vaild drivers license and b) is related to great, great aunt Martha and she is somewhere in the car.
Here big debate is that she can drive her friends around in the car as long as she has her brother with her who is her “relative” and is 18, BUT he does not have a license.
I say not, she say yay.
Again, Illinois might be different, so keep that in mind - the way I read ours, she can have only one passenger in the car under the age of 21 that she is not related to, period. If she had three sisters under age 21, they could all be in the car. Two siblings, one friend would be OK; two friends, one sibling would NOT be OK. 4/5/6 other teenagers would not be OK here, even if they WERE siblings, simply because she doesn’t have that many seatbelts.
TestKeys, you have to remember that by this point, she will already have her full driver’s license and will not need any other licensed driver in the car with her. So whether or not the relative has a valid license is moot. The spirit of the law is to prevent kids from doing the stupid things in/with cars that we all did as teenagers that we somehow managed to survive. So, having a responsible relative in the car will hopefully prevent stupid behavior. No license needed.
Who came up with this law? The Association of Nerdy and Pathetically Dateless Brothers?
According to my reading of the new statute, she can’t have more than one unrelated passengers unless she has a parent, guardian, or custodian in the car, regardless of whether her brother has a license. She can haul around as many “family members” as she wants (but that is pretty narrowly defined in the statute, too), but she can only have more than one unrelated person if there is a parent or guardian also in the car. Here is the relevant text:
4507.071 (B)(4)
No holder of a probationary driver’s license who is less than seventeen years of age shall operate a motor vehicle upon a highway or any public or private property used by the public for purposes of vehicular travel or parking with more than one person who is not a family member occupying the vehicle unless the probationary license holder is accompanied by the probationary license holder’s parent, guardian, or custodian.
Why would it make sense for the other person to have a license? This person has passed the driving test and gotten a driver’s license, the extra probationary requirements arise out of hopes of keeping the teenagers alive by preventing the most common type of situation that makes them dead on the road (as far as I know, no cite). Argument in California (again, no cite) is that you want to prevent a car full of teenagers, especially at night. The idea being is that not that they want somebody older and with more driving experience assisting the person, but they want to prevent the social (as opposed to technical) situation of having just teenagers in the car.
In California, last time I checked the penalty for breaking those rules was no points (it wasn’t a moving violation) and a $35 fine. A $50 fine for second offense and every offense thereafter. That’s what I found in the vehicle code at least. I’ve asked several police officers in person and on the internet and got vastly different responses that were obvious lies intended to keep me from breaking this law. Some of the responses I received “Your license is revoked”, “Your car gets impounded” and “Your license gets suspended”. I got suspicious and pulled the vehicle code. Again, no cite, and YMMV since this was almost a decade ago.
My impression, based on the facts presented here to date and not on having read the law:
There are two distinct laws governing the situation that Test Keys asks about:
Teenage Ohio drivers with “probationary licenses” may operate a motor vehicle only with a licensed adult driver in the front passenger’s seat. This law does not restrict the number of passengers occupying a rear seat or seats.
Teenage Ohio drivers with full licenses may operate a motor vehicle without a licensed driver accompanying them. They may transport as many family members as the car will legally accommodate. They may transport only one passenger who is not a family member, but this does not delimit them from also transporting family members.
As I’m reading the material presented here, “family member” means a family member of the driver or of the single permitted unrelated passenger. But I could be misconstruing that.