Assemblée législative de l'Ontario

GRADUATED LICENSING
CAA ONTARIO

CITY OF SCARBOROUGH PUBLIC HEALTH DEPARTMENT, NURSING DIVISION

TORONTO CITY CYCLING COMMITTEE

MADD CANADA

DOMINION OF CANADA GENERAL INSURANCE CO

DOUGLAS ANNETT

JOSEPH KLAMER

OFFICE OF THE CHIEF CORONER

CONTENTS

Thursday 9 September 1993

Graduated licensing

CAA Ontario

Glenn Moore, chair, government and public affairs committee

Catherine E. Newell, vice-chair, government and public affairs committee

City of Scarborough public health department, nursing division

Judith Lang, public health nurse

Toronto City Cycling Committee

Antonio Lopes, member

Paul Rappell, co-chair

Barb Wentworth, bicycling safety education coordinator, city of Toronto

MADD Canada

John Bates, representative

Dominion of Canada General Insurance Co

George Cooke, president and chief executive officer

Douglas Annett

Joseph Klamer

Office of the Chief Coroner

Dr James G. Young, chief coroner

STANDING COMMITTEE ON RESOURCES DEVELOPMENT

*Chair / Président: Huget, Bob (Sarnia ND)

*Vice-Chair / Vice-Président: Cooper, Mike (Kitchener-Wilmot ND)

*Conway, Sean G. (Renfrew North/-Nord L)

Fawcett, Joan M. (Northumberland L)

Jordan, Leo (Lanark-Renfrew PC)

*Klopp, Paul (Huron ND)

*Murdock, Sharon (Sudbury ND)

*Offer, Steven (Mississauga North/-Nord L)

*Turnbull, David (York Mills PC)

Waters, Daniel (Muskoka-Georgian Bay/Muskoka-Baie-Georgienne ND)

*Wilson, Gary (Kingston and The Islands/Kingston et Les Îles ND)

*Wood, Len (Cochrane North/-Nord ND)

*In attendance / présents

Substitutions present / Membres remplaçants présents:

Dadamo, George (Windsor-Sandwich ND) for Mr Waters

Daigeler, Hans (Nepean L) for Mrs Fawcett

Murdoch, Bill (Grey-Owen Sound PC) for Mr Jordan

Also taking part / Autres participants et participantes:

Ministry of Transportation:

Dadamo, George, parliamentary assistant to the minister

Domoney, Bob, manager, graduated licensing compliance branch

Levine, Paul, manager, safety policy office

Clerk / Greffière: Manikel, Tannis

Staff / Personnel: McNaught, Andrew, research officer, Legislative Research Service

The committee met at 1005 in the St Clair Room, Macdonald Block, Toronto.

GRADUATED LICENSING
CAA ONTARIO

The Chair (Mr Bob Huget): The first witness this morning is CAA Ontario. Good morning and welcome. You've been allocated one half-hour and the committee would like about 15 minutes of that, if it's possible, for questions and answers and dialogue. Go ahead.

Mr Glenn Moore: My name is Glenn Moore. I'm with the Canadian Automobile Association, Ontario. I'm chairman of the public affairs and government committee. With me today is Catherine Newell of the Hamilton Automobile Club and Pat Curran of CAA Toronto.

CAA Ontario is a federation of all not-for-profit automobile clubs in Ontario and has 1.5 million members. The association consists of 11 autonomous clubs with offices serving Ontarians in the various communities: CAA Thunder Bay; CAA Elgin Norfolk; CAA Northeastern Ontario, with a head office at Sudbury; CAA Niagara; CAA Peterborough; CAA Ottawa; CAA Windsor; CAA Midwestern Ontario, with a head office at Kitchener; the Hamilton Automobile Club; CAA Toronto; CAA Eastern Ontario, and its principal office is at Kingston.

One of CAA Ontario's specific objects, namely, "to aid in the establishment and maintenance of uniform and stable legislation relating to the regulation and use of automobiles and other motor vehicles and the rights and privileges of the owners and users thereof," is also one of our most important roles, that of being an advocate for motorists. It is in this capacity that we make our submission to you today.

I would like to ask Catherine Newell to handle the next portion of the presentation.

Ms Catherine E. Newell: CAA Ontario has for a long time been a proponent of graduated drivers' licensing in Ontario. We proposed this licensing system long before the tragic accidents of last year, which caused the public to press for government changes in the licensing of new drivers.

We are very much aware that traffic accidents are the leading cause of death for Ontario young people aged 16 to 24. Statistics also show, however, that all new drivers, regardless of their age, have a much higher risk of having a collision than drivers with as little as two to five years' experience. We fully support the government's proposed graduated drivers' licensing system as it has been developed, with some minor modifications.

In a study of drivers 18 to 22 years old by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety -- the AAA is the American Automobile Association, our affiliate in the United States, and the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety is a foundation for safety research done by the AAA -- titled Perceptions, Attitudes, Motivations and Behaviours, the AAA examined the fact that young drivers were disproportionately involved in traffic accidents and fatalities. The study found that the greatest risk factors associated with motor vehicle accidents by youth are their age and lack of driving experience. Characteristics such as risk-taking tendencies and anti-social behaviour are also important.

As many of Ontario's novice drivers will be young drivers, an AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety study indicates why certain restraints are key to a graduated licence system. In the AAA study it was found that driving is very important to most young people for achievement of their goals. Safety is a secondary consideration. The goals include, but are not limited to, establishing independence; travelling to and from places of work or school and going places with friends; obtaining privacy; meeting new people; establishing a sense of identity; coping with or expressing emotions; achieving social status; and making the transition from youth to adulthood.

Although as adults we may view risky driving behaviour by young drivers as irrational, the results of this AAA study produced convincing evidence that risky driving behaviour can, for young people, provide valuable social rewards. It can be a source of fun and excitement and a way to escape from boredom. Several young people complained about lack of social activities. Many newly licensed drivers, particularly males, clearly enjoy the thrill of racing other drivers or driving at excessive speeds. Risky driving is also a means to show off in public and to achieve social status with a peer group. To many young drivers it is more to be admired than deplored. Trying for social status and getting attention is not restricted to men only. Excerpts from the AAA study show that females encourage and reinforce risky driving by males by praising them for it.

The AAA study found that risk-taking behaviours, rather than being arbitrary or fortuitous or reflecting some kind of youthful perversity, like all learned behaviour, are purposive, goal-directed and capable of fulfilling multiple goals that are central to adolescent life.

Risk-taking behaviour might serve the young person's need to assert independence from parental control, to express opposition to adult authority or to have a handy coping mechanism for anxiety, frustration and failure. For some it may be a means of identification with a peer group and acceptance by that group.

Young people cannot always be expected to repress their emotional needs. Well-planned intervention programs can assist them to channel emotions and express their needs in constructive ways. To young drivers their behaviour is not irrational. It is, however, being motivated by a rationale different from that of adults. Safe driving, from the perspective of young drivers, may have few social or other rewards other than the avoidance of punishment or injury.

The vulnerabilities of late adolescence, the high motor vehicle accident rate of the young, and the pressures to take responsibility for oneself in a complex and highly mobile society create factors that require serious consideration.

Two major approaches have been evident in addressing the problems: One is through education and the other is through restrictive regulation such as graduated drivers' licences calling for curfews and other restrictions.

In the AAA study it was determined that young people found driver education to be valuable. Some commented favourably on the quality of the course they took and its positive impact on their driving. However, others complained about the lack of competence of the instructor or the overemphasis on classroom instruction combined with insufficient attention to behind-the-wheel experience. The study found that driver education is viewed as a way of acquiring the mechanical skills of driving more than as an appreciation of attitudes and values conducive to responsible driving.

CAA Ontario would urge the provincial government to:

(a) Establish uniform, high standards for teacher and instructor training;

(b) Institute high-quality programs of driver training in all high schools;

(c) Set acceptable minimum course standards for commercial driving schools;

(d) Adopt legislation and regulations to control the activities of all driving schools.

This is particularly important, because in the proposed model of the government, driver education in fact can change the period of time a driver is in level 1 from 12 months to eight months, so it's critical that commercial driving schools be strictly regulated and teach a designated mandatory curriculum.

(e) Develop safety programs to reinforce formal education training through informal channels, specifically, parents, older siblings, peers and the media, including television, movies and music. That was one of the other conclusions of the AAA study, that this type of mechanism is very important, as well as the formal.

The California publication The Parent Teen Training Aid is designed for the parents of students and describes what the student is expected to learn. Its purpose is to actively involve the parent in the teenager's learning-todrive process. Instructions to the parents regarding what must be covered by the student are clearly set forth in this publication. In California, prior to the young driver taking the driving test, the parent, driving instructor etc must sign the minor's permit certifying that they had covered the recommended material, thereby reinforcing in both the young driver and the parent the serious nature of the learning-to-drive process.

Maryland also introduced a voluntary parent involvement countermeasure to encourage parents to provide their young drivers with more supervised practised driving. They developed two handbooks for this purpose. The first handbook, which is issued with the learner's permit, focuses on skills such as watching surrounding traffic, following other vehicles, merging into traffic, controlling speed and keeping the proper distance between vehicles -- basic driving skills.

Handbook II, however, which is issued with the provisional licence, is designed to help the provisional licensee practise under more difficult driving situations identified as driving on freeways, at night, in heavy traffic and during inclement weather.

Although Ontario's proposed graduated driver licensing system is for all novice drivers regardless of age, CAA Ontario recommends the adoption of an experienced driver-novice driver handbook as an integral part of its new system. We specifically recommend inclusion in the handbook of materials which would allow the fully licensed, experienced driver to teach the novice driver the importance of resisting peer pressure to deviate from good driving practice when behind the wheel. This is particularly important for the young novice driver. Unfortunately, this area has not received adequate attention in driver education programs today.

CAA's public policy survey for 1991 sought to obtain CAA member opinions on graduated drivers' licences. Several questions were asked. One question asked was:

"Graduated licensing systems are being considered as a way to attempt to reduce collisions involving new drivers. They impose some restrictions which are gradually lifted so that novice drivers progress through a step-by-step method into unrestricted driving privileges. Do you think that graduated licensing systems should apply to new drivers?"

It elicited the following responses: yes, for all drivers regardless of age, 66.6%; yes, but only for drivers under a certain age, 18.1%; no, 13.4%; no answer, 1.9%.

Another question used a rating scale of one to four and asked members to indicate how strongly they felt about certain restrictions for new drivers, and in the presentation there is a chart which indicates -- we looked at driver curfew of 11 pm, zero blood alcohol level, restrictions from high-speed roadways and a limited number of passengers allowed in the vehicle.

I'm not going read to the results of the chart, but just the summary. The results of these questions suggest that a majority of members, 66%, support graduated licences for new drivers regardless of age. The favoured forms of restrictions are zero blood alcohol level, with 78.5% support, and limiting number of passengers at 58.5% support. Forty-two per cent approve of a night-driving curfew, 36% approve of a restriction from high-speed roadways and 45% approve of requiring an experienced driver to be present. A total of 1,350 respondents from CAA Ontario clubs answered these questions.

I want to point out that these were asked in 1991 at really the beginning of discussions about graduated drivers' licenses and at the beginning of the public's first information about what such a system would be like, so the expectation would be that if these questions were asked again this year, you would find higher percentages now that there's greater understanding of the system. I think the percentages were very high considering they were asked at such an early time. It shows that our membership is quite committed to graduated drivers' licences.

Further analysis of the survey data shows that of drivers under the age of 25, 22% approve of a night-driving curfew, 38% approve of restriction from high-speed roadways, 43% approve of limiting the number of passengers allowed, and 53% approve of requiring a more experienced driver to be present. Fully 92% of young drivers supporting graduated licences approve of a zero blood alcohol requirement.

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Since both age and inexperience are factors directly related to collision rates, and there are more older, first-time drivers on the road today, countermeasures must be aimed at the novice driver, not just the young driver. Novice drivers at any age have higher rates of collision involvement than drivers who have some driving experience.

In the report entitled New To the Road, by the Insurance Bureau of Canada and the Traffic Injury Research Foundation of Canada, the conclusion is drawn that the risk of collision decreases with increases in experience independent of age. Further, increases in experience appear to have a greater impact about 30-year-olds than among 20-year-olds. The risk of collision among 30-year-old experienced drivers is about 38% less than it is among the novice 30-year-olds. However, this differential is only about 8% for the 20-year-olds. For this reason, it is imperative that the graduated drivers' licences system apply not only to young drivers but to all novice drivers.

Among older, newly licensed drivers, there is a need to ensure opportunities to gain driving experience since this diminishes their risk of collision. Among newly licensed young drivers, the need for experience is also important, but prevention measures must acknowledge and account for the powerful role played by age-related factors as identified in the AAA study.

In the proposed system, CAA Ontario strongly supports that for either a level 1 or level 2 driver a zero blood alcohol content is absolutely appropriate. A very clear message must be given that only a policy of zero tolerance is acceptable. Young drivers are particularly susceptible to impairment by small amounts of alcohol. For example, in a study by Paul Zador in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol, male drivers aged 16 to 20 have six times the driver fatality risk in single-vehicle crashes at BACs from 0.01% to 0.04% compared to male drivers aged 25 and over at these low levels.

In another study by Mr Simpson, titled Polydrug Effects and Traffic Safety, it was found that the risk of a crash, especially a fatal crash, increases with increasing BAC levels but that drivers aged 16 to 19 have a higher risk of a fatal crash than older drivers at all BACs.

Further, the study noted that drivers aged 16 and 17 at low BACs, 0.01% to 0.049%, have a crash risk three times that of drivers aged 18 to 24 at the same BAC levels. The report summary on young drivers and alcohol states, "Although young people drink and drive less often than people of other age groups, the young who do choose to drink and drive are at significantly higher risk of fatal crash than other age groups of drinking drivers." CAA Ontario further recommends that the fully licensed driver accompanying the level 1 driver should also maintain a zero blood alcohol content.

If a novice driver in the graduated licensing system has a BAC reading up to 0.08%, it is imperative to apply appropriate sanctions; ie, suspend the driver's licence for a specified period of time and then, at the end of his or her suspension, start the driver back at the beginning of the level he/she was in at the time of the suspension.

In the analysis done by the department of motor vehicles in California on the trial of its provisional licensing program -- and this study was just recently completed -- one of the significant factors in the reduction of accidents was the early application of sanctions for at-fault accidents and/or convictions for violations of the traffic code. This experience demonstrates how important it is to have early appropriate sanctions for deviant driving behaviour.

The USA experience indicates that about half of the fatal motor vehicle crashes involving teenagers occur at night. As a result of this experience, a few states have implemented curfews. The result is fewer fatal crashes. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety in the USA studied the effects of curfews in four states and found reductions of as much as 69% in crashes involving 16-year-old drivers during restricted hours. That was in Pennsylvania. In New York the reduction was 62%, in Maryland 40% and in Louisiana 25%. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, in another study, had evidence that most young drivers comply with night-time restrictions most of the time.

Given this experience, the application of a curfew for level 1 drivers should achieve a reduction in involvement in crashes overall, as well as a reduction in fatalities, particularly of young novice drivers. CAA Ontario supports the curfew for level 1 drivers from midnight to 5 am.

Banning novice drivers from the 400 series highways and certain designated multilane urban expressways in level 1 is appropriate given the premise of the graduated licensing system, which aims to reduce the novice driver's exposure to higher-risk driving situations during their initial driving period. This allows the novice driver into the traffic environment gradually in a manner that enables him or her to gain knowledge, skill and experience over time under controlled conditions. New York state, for example, issues a junior licence at age 16 but with significant restrictions, including a total prohibition for driving in New York City at any time. This does not restrict the novice driver from learning to drive on a highway at a higher speed limit, which is a less hazardous environment than the 400 series or like multilane highways.

The restriction limiting the number of passengers a level 1 driver carries to the number of seatbelts in the vehicle ensures that all occupants have access to seatbelt restraint protection. CAA Ontario supports this restriction.

CAA Ontario is concerned with respect to the length of time spent in level 1 for class M motorcycle drivers. Although our winter driving conditions shorten the length of time motorcycles are generally used in Ontario, 60 days in level 1 is not a sufficient duration to be meaningful in a graduated drivers' licensing system. We recommend that this period be lengthened to six months.

CAA Ontario supports the level 2 restrictions, particularly the maintenance of a zero blood alcohol level.

We applaud the government's intention to institute a test on advanced driving skills that truly reflects the driver's ability to perceive and avoid hazards before the novice driver qualifies for full licence privileges.

In summary, CAA Ontario wishes to thank the committee for giving us this opportunity to address you today and let you know about our concerns, not only for the safety of novice drivers but for motorists in general. We cannot overemphasize the importance of the implementation of graduated drivers' licences and we fully support such a system.

The Chair: Thank you. Questions? Mr Daigeler, Transportation critic for the official opposition.

Mr Hans Daigeler (Nepean): Thank you for an excellent brief. I appreciated, in particular, the summary of the AAA study which deals really with some of the motivational factors that are at issue with young drivers. I think it's an excellent analysis as to why some of these young people act the way they do, and I think we'd all be well advised to take that into consideration.

My colleague Mr Conway is not here, and I'm sure he would have asked you about the rural people. On his behalf, I should ask you, how many rural members do you have, and do you feel that the rural members in your association would, more or less, share the views that have been expressed here?

Ms Newell: Absolutely, and when you look at the clubs, because all the clubs are represented in this brief today -- and when you look at, let's say, CAA Elgin Norfolk, whose head office is in St Thomas, you have the whole Norfolk area. CAA Northeastern Ontario is Sudbury and Thunder Bay, so you've got the whole northern territory covered. CAA Peterborough has a lot of rural area. CAA Midwestern has Kitchener. CAA Windsor has Sarnia and all of the outlying areas around Windsor.

Mr Daigeler: So you can't really recall offhand having sort of different views from rural folks?

Ms Newell: No, not at all.

Mr Daigeler: A second question, and something that really hasn't come out as much as I thought it might, is that several of the earlier presenters said that the level 2 restrictions are too minimal and that really, more or less, if you've passed level 1, then you're free to travel. Would you be in favour of greater restrictions in level 2?

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Ms Newell: No, because in level 2 you've taken the first year and you've restricted them from driving on the 400 series highways and you've restricted them from driving during the nighttime hours starting at midnight. These young drivers have to gain experience in those driving situations as well, so with a solid base in the level 1 of being restricted from that and of learning the basic driving skills, that's the key, that they have the strong basis for driving. Then they move into the much more serious traffic conditions, the nighttime driving and the freeway driving. They've got to learn to drive in those situations. So we would say that at level 2 they should be allowed to drive in those situations.

The Chair: Mr Turnbull, Transportation critic for the third party.

Mr David Turnbull (York Mills): Because we have only three minutes of questioning, I'll give you all of my questions together, quickly. In your discussion about driving schools, there seemed to be an implication that you felt that some driving schools at the moment aren't cutting the mustard. In fact, in a question to one of the witnesses yesterday, it was suggested that some driving schools are very good but others really aren't thoroughly trained. You're suggesting changes. Perhaps you could expand on that.

Also, there is the question of the seatbelt. I'm very concerned about the idea of allowing two passengers in the front seat even if there are belts. I very strongly believe that we should only have the experienced driver in the front seat beside the driver and that we shouldn't be allowing three people, because the more people there are the more confusion, the more distractions there are. I'd like you to comment on that.

Also, on this question of the class M licences, it was pointed out yesterday that, unlike motor cars where you have an accompanying driver in the first level, you're letting a driver out on a motorbike from day one without any driving test at all. They're just taking the theoretical and then they go out. So it was suggested by one of the witnesses that it would be much better to have the initial road test to go from level 1 to level 2 as quickly as possible, because you don't have an accompanying driver. Perhaps you could comment on these three points.

Ms Newell: I would still say that they've got to have a longer period of experience, again, driving under restricted conditions, "restricted" meaning they can't drive one half-hour before sunset and after. I mean, that's their limit, so they're driving daylight hours essentially. There should be a longer period of restriction for that driving. They shouldn't be allowed to go into the night-time as quickly as the 60 or 90 days.

The motorcycle driver should take a test before they're even on the road, and that test, at all the levels of testing, should be stronger. It shouldn't be just a written and very minor, let's say, visual written and that be it. There should be tests done at each level.

Mr Turnbull: And the front passenger?

Ms Newell: If you have a child, for example, who doesn't need to be in a car restraint -- in fact, let's say, 4 or 5 -- and they're out of the restraint, it could be a big distraction. I think that's valid.

Mr Turnbull: My kids are older now, but I would hate to have had them in the front seat.

Ms Newell: Yes, I understand the point and I think it's a good point. CAA's policy has, in deliberation, been to allow the number of passengers for the number of restraints in the vehicle.

The Chair: Mr Dadamo, parliamentary assistant to the Minister of Transportation.

Mr George Dadamo (Windsor-Sandwich): If we set a standard provincial curfew, and we're talking about the midnight to 5 am in the morning -- thanks for being quite extensive on some of the responses that the respondents gave to you, and I've heard from some of the colleagues in the last couple of days or so -- if you live in the north, midnight till 5 o'clock in the morning seems to be a lot different than how it will be here in southern Ontario, for example. Are some of the respondents clear to you as to what will happen in that case?

Ms Newell: Yes. In terms of accepting a curfew, very much. The policy is clear that this curfew would be acceptable.

Mr Dadamo: The midnight till five?

Ms Newell: Midnight till five.

Mr Dadamo: We've heard the arguments that if you're living up -- and I appreciate, of course -- in northern Ontario, you're working till midnight or 1 o'clock in the morning, you're part-time, you're not as close as you may be to Metro Toronto coming from a Burger King or MacDonald's or wherever you're coming from and you're many kilometres away. So that's going to be a detriment, I suppose.

Ms Newell: See, there again, though, I don't understand the concern totally because there are no restrictions in level 2, there's no curfew there, so we're talking about level 1. In level 1, that driver has to be accompanied by that fully licensed driver, so if it's a situation where a parent has to come and pick up a child, then there's your fully licensed driver. That child still can't drive home at 1 or 2 in the morning on his own because he's not accompanied by the fully licensed driver.

The Chair: I'd thank the Canadian Automobile Association, Ontario for an excellent submission before the committee this morning. It's a very comprehensive submission and I think that all members will review it again to look at some of the information that's in it.

I thank each of you for taking the opportunity to come down here this morning and put forward your views. Your views are important to the committee and I trust that you'll stay in touch with the committee as it proceeds through the process.

CITY OF SCARBOROUGH PUBLIC HEALTH DEPARTMENT, NURSING DIVISION

The Chair: Next is the city of Scarborough public health department, nursing division.

Ms Judith Lang: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Judith Lang and I'm a public health nurse in the city of Scarborough.

I must thank you for the opportunity to speak to you today. I come here on behalf of the city of Scarborough health department. As a public health nurse, I work in the adolescent program so I deal with students mostly and kids in the community from ages 10 to 19.

Our mandate is to promote and preserve the health of the adolescent population in Scarborough by utilizing strategies for health promotion and disease prevention: strategies such as education, community development, mass communication, advocacy and policy formulation. Those are just a few, and it's the last two that I use to come today.

I'm here to express the health department's support for the proposed graduated licensing legislation and to share the questions that arose during our research of this issue. We believe the proposed graduated licensing legislation will supplement and enhance our efforts to prevent motor vehicle crashes, the number one cause of death and morbidity in adolescence.

Through our research of current studies, we are aware of the numerous factors that contribute to motor vehicle crashes: drinking and driving, failure to use car restraints and risk-taking behaviours, to name a few. These are factors that we as staff of the health department are addressing every day through community awareness events, the media, displays in malls, schools and community centres, group facilitation efforts. We take programs such as the Prevent Alcohol and Risk Related Trauma in Youth program and use those in schools and various community areas.

We recognize that driver inexperience is also a major contributing factor in motor vehicle crashes, but it is a particularly difficult factor for us to address or to have any impact on -- for obvious reasons: We can't take people out driving with us.

Graduated licensing addresses this contributing factor in an innovative manner. It provides new drivers with a safe learning environment in which to gradually develop the practical knowledge, skills and experience needed to safely drive. This is true prevention, and we believe it will inevitably lead to the desired reduction in mortality and morbidity which will in turn lead to reduced health care costs.

We are pleased that graduated licensing as currently being proposed will be mandated and apply to all new drivers. We are also pleased that the program is based on research from programs found to be effective in other countries.

The Scarborough health department feels it is important for the proposal to incorporate the principles of adult learning, specifically the principle of driver readiness to learn. For example, in the publication New To The Road, the issue of formal driver education is discussed. Where in the graduated licensing process would such education be most effective for new drivers? We feel this is a good question and it is our opinion that formal driver education should be provided after some driving experience has been gained and perhaps specific education programs in both level 1 and level 2 might be considered, education programs that are detailed and increase in difficult situations for level 2. I can talk about that later. This type of thing might be worthwhile piloting and evaluating.

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Further in our reading of New to the Road: Graduated Licensing and What it Means to You, we could not help but wonder how this legislation would be enforced, and it appears that enforcement is crucial to its success. In these economic times of shrinking budgets, decreased manpower and increased workload, one wonders how graduated licensing would further impact on these finite resources. If the police forces of Ontario will be responsible for enforcement, we wonder how they will (a) deal with the added workload and (b) determine their enforcement priorities, appreciating that they too are struggling with fewer resources and rising crime rates.

Another area that we question involves one of the criteria for level 1 drivers, namely, that the number of passengers in the car be limited to the number of seatbelts available. We are concerned that this seems to be a large number of people in a car with an inexperienced driver. There may only be three people in a small car; it could be seven in mine. That is a concern. Health department staff gave input regarding the pre-licensing criteria of other provinces, such as the Maritimes and Newfoundland, where the only passenger allowed in the car with the learner is one licensed driver. We wonder if this has ever been explored in Ontario.

The criterion requiring a person with at least four years' driving experience to accompany a level 1 driver was positively received by health department staff, although again, we wonder how enforcement would be guaranteed.

In conclusion, the Scarborough health department supports the proposed graduated licensing legislation and believes that as with any new program, ongoing evaluation will help identify strengths and weaknesses. We believe the proposal is very comprehensive and we welcome any communication regarding the program's progress.

The city of Scarborough health department shares the vision of the graduated licensing system, namely, to reduce mortality and morbidity for motor vehicle crashes. We believe that a coordinated approach to this serious public health problem is vital to its success. We will be following closely the progress of this proposal in the Legislature and we look forward to a graduated licensing system in Ontario.

Thank you very much for your time and consideration.

Mr Turnbull: You spoke about the potential of mandating driver education, which at the moment of course it isn't. How would you foresee this being done? Would you write legislation which would say that you couldn't get your licence unless you took driver education?

Ms Lang: That is one possibility, that perhaps in level 1 there would be -- it doesn't have to be a giant course, but a small course that everyone would have to attend where some defensive driving information and skills would be taught. We know that when people are first learning to drive, they're very busy trying to just coordinate the mechanics of driving, so if we can get people to have time with that and then introduce them to more defensive driving and different skills in level 1, that is a standard that's set and across the board for everybody so we have some control making sure everybody is receiving appropriate and qualified instruction.

Mr Turnbull: Let me ask you something to position this. I have been, more than anybody else in the Legislature, the person who's been pushing for graduated licences, almost like a broken record for the last two years. So I'm delighted that this is happening now. I'm from a Toronto riding; so are you -- Metro Toronto, I have to emphasize. It's very easy for us to take an urban view of things. There are people in northern Ontario and other parts of rural Ontario who are a long, long way from any facility that would offer driver education. So I would ask how you would see that fitting in with your suggestion that we should mandate this.

Ms Lang: I think it would be more difficult. I take your point very seriously: It would be more difficult for people in rural areas. We haven't thought it all completely through. With that, I don't know if it would be possible with driving schools to begin more of overall standard-setting with different driving schools all over Ontario so that everyone would be able to do it.

Mr Turnbull: There's a big difference between setting standards for driving schools and mandating that people use driving schools. Certainly, if I had my druthers, I would send everybody to a driving school, but it may not be realistic in Ontario. I think it's very easy for us in urban areas to take --

Ms Lang: That view.

Mr Turnbull: -- that view. So in making any law, we have to be sensitive to the vastly different situations that exist across the province. Let us say you have this as an optional program as we have it at the moment. As a public health nurse, you must be very familiar with the success of some of your programs and the lack of success of other programs. It's a question of incenting people. If you haven't mandated something, how would you incent? Would it be through the insurance system?

Ms Lang: That's one possibility, or again with formal driver education, perhaps in level 1 shortening the length of time that you were in the level if you had completed a specific driver education course. That would be one way we could see doing it, because I know you do need to provide incentive, we find with the teens that we deal with.

Mr Turnbull: Yes. Thank you very much.

Mr Mike Cooper (Kitchener-Wilmot): One of the questions that's come up for the committee is that the people who are going to be directly affected by graduated licensing, we don't have many of them coming and presenting. I'm wondering if there's a back-and-forth dialogue between your group and the students or whether you're just doing an education thing. How do they feel about the graduated licensing? I know there's a lot of apprehension out there by the young people --

Ms Lang: Yes.

Mr Cooper: -- and that's why we have a six-month waiting list, because everybody is trying to get in right now. Have they given any feedback on how they're going to be affected and how they are approaching the idea of graduated licensing?

Ms Lang: Sure. Yes, some of the teens that we have talked with are quite concerned about the restrictions that are put on. A number of the teens I've talked to are beginning to understand, as we educate about statistics and the risks and behaviours that go on, that yes, it is an important thing for them to be restricted. They're not happy about it, but what we try to stress as well is that driving is a privilege, not a right, and that there's a lot of responsibility that comes with it and that these are measures that are not just for teenagers but for all new drivers. So we try to help them realize they're not being singled out and picked on. But I think some of them are coming around.

Mr Gary Wilson (Kingston and The Islands): Thank you, Ms Lang, for your presentation here. I was just wondering what -- and I missed this; perhaps you went over it -- your association with driving is in your responsibilities as a public health nurse.

Ms Lang: My responsibility is mostly education about safe driving of people who live in Scarborough. We also, with our children's team, talk about general child safety, car restraints, home safety, that type of thing. We do presentations in the schools about drinking and driving, risk-taking, decision-making, all the contributing factors to motor vehicle crashes. This is a new committee that we've just developed. We've been working in conjunction with the police on some of our presentations as well and using their resources.

Mr Gary Wilson: This idea of who will instruct the instructor, the experienced driver: As we know from observation, there are all kinds of driving experience out there. Even people you would expect to know better don't always do the appropriate thing. I was wondering whether you could give some idea, then, about refresher courses or just how education could fit in beyond the graduated licence, partly in relation to Mr Cooper's question about how young people look at it, because I think one of the things they say is, "Why are we being picked on when there are so many bad habits out there?" What can we do? I'm thinking from your experience as a public health nurse not only in the area of driver education but also public health issues that suggest there are better ways of doing things, that people tend to forget after their first lessons how to behave in a way that's appropriate.

Ms Lang: I think I could see possibly, again with our education programs with our adult team as well, that if there were refresher programs available we could advocate for people to attend this type of thing and highlight again the dangers and the risky behaviours that we're seeing. I'm trying to think of some other things.

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Mr Gary Wilson: Would you go so far as to require it, since driving is so important and the consequences of bad driving are so severe?

Ms Lang: It would be something really worth considering, to tell you the truth. Your suggestion is that perhaps after a few years of driving, when you renew your licence you have to go back and take a test again?

Mr Gary Wilson: Or even some instruction, because circumstances change so much over the driving life of an individual.

Ms Lang: It's possible. I haven't discussed that with anyone at the health department.

Mr Gary Wilson: Mr Cooper thinks he'd lose his licence.

It's come up about having some kind of a decal or some indication in the car that the person driving it is somebody learning. Do you think that's a good idea, singling them out that way?

Ms Lang: I think it's going to be only one of the ways that, say, the police are going to be able to perhaps randomly check and know that it is a learning driver. I don't see there being too much problem with it. I don't know how the teens are going to feel about this.

Mr Gary Wilson: Again, it fits into this idea that people shouldn't be so impatient, perhaps, with any driver, never mind just a learner.

Ms Lang: But you get behind a learner and go, "Oh, boy."

Mr Gary Wilson: Yes, but as I say, maybe you should treat all drivers with courtesy and respect. It's not always really the problem of the person. There are cases where maybe somebody is being uncooperative, but it could be that the person who is impatient is the problem.

Ms Lang: Not the driver.

Mr Gary Wilson: That's the kind of driving we should be encouraging.

Ms Lang: I take your point there. I think the reason I would suggest that the sticker be there would be for enforcement, but yes, I have to agree with your point there that we should all be driving with courtesy and respect, and maybe we don't need the stickers. Do they still use them in Britain?

Mr Turnbull: Yes.

Ms Lang: Last time I was there they had them. I remember relatives there having them on their cars and it was fine. It was just accepted. Perhaps the teens would be that way here.

Mr Daigeler: Most of my questions actually have been asked. However, I'd like to know how much, approximately, of your time you spend on helping the younger people understand the dangers of the road and road safety education types of things. I was very pleased to hear you say that you're doing some of this work. I hadn't, frankly, associated the work of the public health nurse with this area, but I think it's a good idea.

My second question would be whether the other boards also look at driver safety as an issue for the public health nurses.

Ms Lang: To answer your first question, there are approximately 15 nurses on the adolescent team I work with, and we all have high schools in various community associations that we work with. All of us, over the next year, will be providing some presentation, classroom work or a display at our schools, and we will be doing large mall displays where we would be reaching 500 to 800 people in a day with information. This is fairly new for us. We've just been mandated by the Ministry of Health. Our standards include the education of motor vehicle crash morbidity and mortality in today's teens, and then we've gone on and made a specific Scarborough objective that we're trying to reduce the number of accidents and increase the use of seatbelts among our teenagers. It's a fairly new program, so I'd be able to give you numbers down the road.

Mr Daigeler: Since you're saying it's fairly new for your area, I presume it's fairly new for everyone else across the province. Are you aware whether there are others that are involved in this?

Ms Lang: There are other health units across Ontario that are beginning to develop programs.

Mr Daigeler: Beginning to?

Ms Lang: Yes. It's fairly new, because it seems, as you say, sort of a stretch for the role that we normally play. But again, with health promotion and disease prevention it does fit within the --

Mr Daigeler: And you're saying that the push is coming from the Ministry of Health? Is that where the initiative came from?

Ms Lang: Yes. It is included in our mandated standards and programs that we must offer. It's from the Ministry of Health.

Mr Daigeler: I really think this is an important area. I don't know whether you had a chance to get a copy of the brief from the CAA.

Ms Lang: No. I'd be most interested in that.

Mr Daigeler: I think you would be interested because they're referring to a study that was done by the American Automobile Association on why young people drive the way they do. Especially when you try and educate the young people, I think it's very important to analyse what drives them. I would recommend to you to get a copy at least of this brief, if not of that AAA study. I think in there they are pointing out that what is really crucial isn't just sort of training but a changing of attitudes. Of course, how do you change attitudes? That is, in all cases, a very difficult undertaking, but as long as one clearly understands the motivational factors that are in place, I think then at least you have a better chance.

Frankly, I just want to say I wish you well in your undertaking. I think that's certainly very important as well, in addition to the legislation and the regulations that are being proposed, because the one thing is information and training and the other thing is actually doing what you were taught and trained to do.

The Chair: With the committee's indulgence, I would like to ask at least one question. The critics of this process would suggest that a graduated licensing system has inherent in it some inequities and some inconvenience for people. I would suggest that likely victims of serious accidents suffer some inconvenience as well, and there are a whole range of issues, I think, involved with that.

I would like to know from you, first of all, if you have a lot of dialogue with, for example, young people in the education system around this issue of whether or not they feel they are being discriminated against, or this is a major inconvenience that they can overcome. If that's the view, what would your suggestion be to legislators who have to look at the public safety issue and are also accountable for the inconvenience and inequity issues? In other words, many people, particularly rural members, I'm sure, will have some very heated meetings about what this is doing to farm children, for example, in terms of major inconvenience in the operation of a farm. I would just like your views on that, and if we're going to err, where do we err?

Ms Lang: I would err on the side of caution. That's from nursing, isn't it? As for dialogue with young people, we have not had a great deal, but we have had some dialogue with them, and yes, some of them do feel they are being discriminated against with this.

The Chair: Do they understand the health and safety issue or is it just a feeling of being discriminated against?

Ms Lang: I think they're beginning, as I said, to understand. That's what we've been trying, with our presentations as well, to have information about graduated licensing and then to expand upon it, the reasons why, using statistics. We have videos and different things that we use that talk about the results of accidents and we try very hard to help them understand the reason.

Once they listen to us and we do dialogue back about it, most of them do start to realize that it's not just teenagers who are being targeted, but all new drivers. I think initially there will be some upset about it, but I think with perhaps education programs such as we can offer as well, and the media, it will begin to disseminate and people will begin to understand. I think we have to err on the side of caution. I really think we do.

The damage, the pain and suffering that accidents cause cannot be overlooked. It is a major public health problem that has to start to be addressed with great seriousness.

The Chair: I thank the city of Scarborough public health department, nursing division, and Judith Lang, who very ably represented it this morning. Your views are important to the committee, and we hope you'll stay in touch with us. If you have further information at some point in time -- I think there was a hint that you may have for Mr Daigeler -- please forward it to the committee. We'd appreciate receiving it.

TORONTO CITY CYCLING COMMITTEE

The Chair: Next is the Toronto City Cycling Committee; Barb Wentworth and company. Nice to see you again, Barb. You're no stranger to this committee. Identify yourselves and proceed with your presentation.

Mr Antonio Lopes: Good morning. My name's Antonio Lopes. I am a trustee for the Metropolitan Separate School Board here in Toronto and a member representative for that board on the Toronto City Cycling Committee.

Mr Paul Rappell: I'm Paul Rappell, co-chair of the city cycling committee.

Ms Barb Wentworth: I'm Barb Wentworth, bicycling safety education coordinator for the city of Toronto.

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Mr Lopes: Mr Chairman, members of the committee, the Toronto City Cycling Committee appreciates the opportunity to present a cycling point of view on the proposed graduated licensing legislation. As mentioned, my name is Antonio Lopes. Barb, myself and Paul Rappell are here before you to present our views as members of the Toronto City Cycling Committee. Barb is also on the board of the Road Safety Educators' Association.

The Toronto City Cycling Committee is a special advisory committee to Toronto city council. Our mandate, as specified in the terms of our structure, is basically to encourage the use of bicycles and to improve safety for cyclists in the city of Toronto.

We work in three areas: (1) to promote cycling through events like the Bike to Work Week; (2) to improve facilities for cyclists, such as on-road bike lanes and bicycle parking facilities; (3) to educate cyclists and drivers to safely share the roads, which is a serious concern for the Toronto City Cycling Committee, through programs that we've implemented, such as Can-Bike education courses for cyclists, safety, prevention, awareness, courtesy and enforcement programs, or SPACE programs, and a selective traffic enforcement program. Included in that are the recommendations we make through the committee for improvements to current legislation.

I'd like to just comment on the background of the committee. The last time we were before this committee, we talked about cycling safety and bicycle helmet legislation. As you know, the Toronto City Cycling Committee supported Bill 124, but recognized that this legislation by itself is not enough to ensure the safety for cyclists. We made the point that bicycle helmets offered protection to cyclists during a crash, but helmets really do nothing to prevent the crash from happening in the first place. Only knowledge and skill acquired through proper training will prevent crashes from happening. We seriously believe this and we've affirmed this in the city cycling committee.

The committee basically is here to make a very simple statement, a very neutral statement that new drivers, those who are going to be given the graduated licences, be taught how to share the road safely with cyclists. The Toronto City Cycling Committee believes that it is imperative to have a better educated cycling and motoring population in order to reduce the number of crashes and fatalities, and of course the resulting tragedies.

The committee is here to ask to ensure that drivers attending driver education courses receive thorough training in how to safely operate a motor vehicle with non-motorized vehicles using the same roads. This would involve changing course curriculum and materials to contain adequate cycling content and ensuring that students are evaluated on their knowledge and their ability during the testing procedure. This is a key concern for us.

In your literature, it states that inexperienced drivers who receive licence suspensions would have access to government-developed special learning materials to assist them. The Toronto City Cycling Committee applauds, of course, this move and again recommends that all materials used in driver education and testing be reviewed to ensure that drivers are learning skills to share the road with cyclists in safety.

A very important point for the Toronto City Cycling Committee is that the committee believes that the amount of training available on cycling issues to all motorists and all cyclists is really inadequate. Statistics, both in Ontario and in the city, seem to support this. Between the years of 1978 and 1992, 29 to 50 cyclists were killed each year in Ontario. This represents, of course, about 3% of the traffic fatalities.

More and more people, especially in Toronto and outlying areas, are using bicycles as a method of transportation, as a method of recreation. An additional two million cyclists are currently riding in Ontario. In Toronto, we see an increasing public interest and demand for improved bicycle safety and better on-road facilities. As members of the Toronto City Cycling Committee, and my colleagues will attest to this, we've attempted to do as much as possible to improve this bicycle safety both in the city and obviously through our pursuit of helmet legislation in the provincial act.

The Ontario Government Technical Report on the new Bicycle Policy reflects this need for improvements in safety for cyclists. "The provincial government and the Ministry of Transportation have a continuing role to play in improving safety of cycling." Of course, it includes a recommendation that driver handbooks and licensing tests be reviewed to evaluate the feasibility of incorporating more references to safe cycling and bicycle operating characteristics. The Toronto City Cycling Committee would like to see this review expanded to improve the type of cycling information included in the curriculum in driving schools in Ontario.

At this current moment, I'd like to pass the floor on to Barbara Wentworth, who will give you another slide presentation, if possible, on the issues of city cycling, of cycling in general. Then we will have questions and my colleague Paul Rappell will be able to answer any questions from the committee.

Ms Wentworth: We wanted to bring some examples of the type of information that we think new drivers, especially, but all drivers should have.

The Chair: We need to have you wired for sound.

Ms Wentworth: I won't try to repeat that. I don't remember what I said.

Right now, we believe that motorists get very little information on how to negotiate on the road with cyclists. There's little information available. There are more and more cyclists on the road.

I think it's very lucky in driver education, if the student is in the car with the instructor, that they actually pass a cyclist because that opens up an opportunity for the driving instructor to tell the student what to do around cyclists. Unfortunately, what is passed on is very unclear to us. Everyone seems to have an opinion about where bikes should be on the road and what they should be doing. Everybody brings his own bias to that, and whether that has any relationship to safety or the law is a really big question for us.

I think we have to look at making sure that the attitudes and the information that are passed on to new drivers are correct. That is a very key component to increasing safety for cyclists, so let's just start right now and look at where cyclists ride on the road now.

I don't know how many people here cycle. We start off very carefully with the cyclist's position from the curb. A lot of drivers feel that cyclists should stay right over in the gutter, stay out of the way, because that's where they'll be safest. A lot of novice cyclists feel that's the best way to be as well.

What we teach is that if a cyclist stays a metre out from the curb so that they can ride in a very straight line, they're very visible and very predictable to motorists. Now, what happens if a new cyclist rides too close to the curb?

Mr Daigeler: They hit the gullies.

Ms Wentworth: Sure. They run into the sewer grates or the potholes or glass or whatever. What happens then is that the cyclist has to swerve out into traffic to get around that, and that really increases their risk a lot when they do that.

The other thing that puts them at risk there is that if they are riding too close to the curb and a motorist passes too closely, they have nowhere to go. There's no escape route, there's no place for them to be. So it's really important that they stay out from the curb and ride in a very straight line so they're predictable. It doesn't help when motorists believe they should be over closer to the curb. That's really key information.

The same thing happens with parked cars. We have a problem in Toronto that we basically call the door prize, when you ride along and someone opens the car door and you go flying into it. It sounds funny but it's not when you hit the door. Again, we teach cyclists to pretend that all those car doors are open and ride past them. That way if something happens all of a sudden, they're not surprised and they're in a correct road position so they're not going to get hurt. That puts a cyclist a lot further into the traffic lane than a lot of car drivers would like to see them be, but again, it's a defensive driving technique for cyclists. We want drivers to know that. We want them to know that there's a reason that cyclists have chosen to ride in the positions that they are in.

There are also innumerable times -- let's just do this one -- where cyclists have to take the middle of the lane. There are usually very good reasons for a cyclist to take the middle of the lane. If there's construction, if for some reason the lanes are narrow, the cyclist is supposed to shoulder-check, make sure there's room, signal, move out, take the centre of the lane. What that means is that car drivers have to either stay behind until the cyclist moves back over or has to pass in the next lane.

All of us can attest to the fact that you get people honking their horns, "What are you doing out in the middle of the road?" Well, if the driver was looking at the road from the perspective of the cyclist, he would know why the cyclist is out in the middle of the road. Under the Highway Traffic Act, it's perfectly acceptable for cyclists to take the centre of the lane of traffic if their safety warrants it. This type of information is crucial for cyclists, and as more and more people are cycling, motorists have to understand why the cyclists are making the decisions that they're making.

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I see this on my way to work every day. What's wrong in this position? Say this car is turning right, the flicker is on and the cyclist is going straight through. What are the errors in this type of situation? Usually, the cyclist is passing the car on the right or the motor vehicle has overtaken the cyclist and is going to do a turn in front of him. Problems at intersections cause more difficulties for cyclists and motorists than in any other stretch of roadway. That is something that I see.

The error there is that the cyclist is passing on the right. The cyclist should stay behind. If the motorist is overtaking, motorists have to be able to judge the space and the speed of the cyclist. That takes experience, and new drivers have a great deal of difficulty with that.

I'll just show you some correct positions with this. In this situation, the cyclist should either be in front of the car or behind the car or passing on the left. You'll notice that the motorist is making a correct right-hand turn, because he is in the right-most position in the lane to make the turn. Many times they'll be riding along and the car is going to make a right turn. They swing way out and then there's a real conflict. Who has the right of way? We have to avoid those kinds of situations. Drivers who are taking education programs have to get this information and incorporate it into their behavioral skills so that they know what to do around cyclists. Cyclists also have to get this information. We've got a long way to go on all of this.

Left-turn lanes: Many car drivers and many cyclists will say, "Why are you out in the left-turn lane?" Bicycles are vehicles under the Highway Traffic Act, and as long as you're driving according to the Highway Traffic Act, manoeuvres such as this are perfectly safe as long as you have the skill level for it. But many is the time that a motorist here will be honking and indicating that the cyclist should not be out in the middle, should be somehow turned into a pedestrian and that will keep him safe. Cyclists and motorists have to understand that the same rules that apply to car drivers also apply to cyclists, and must have the skills to be able to do that.

Streetcar or railway tracks are another reason that the cyclist has to move out into the centre of the lane, and frequently car drivers do not know why the cyclist is doing that. They have to cross the tracks at 90-degree angles in order to safely negotiate streetcar tracks. I guess I would really like to tell motorists not to pass cyclists while they're going over tracks. It's so easy to catch a tire and go down. I think motorists need to be aware of the hazards that cyclists face.

We won't talk about this one. This is specific to Toronto, but these are the types of track situations we get all the time. People have to know how to negotiate through that, and be careful and be courteous.

I'll just show you one other thing. Actually, this came out of a conference with the Road Safety Educators' Association. It was a situation with a road. There's a cyclist here and a motor vehicle is approaching here. This is an instructor in the car with a new student. The driving instructor used to tell the student, when they approach a cyclist, to pass in the next lane and give the cyclist lots of clearance.

Then the driving instructor told me what happened. When the car moved over here, the following vehicles would go tearing through with very little regard for the cyclist or the amount of space that was necessary, and put the cyclist at risk. So this driving instructor now indicated to students that the correct position for the car is to straddle the lane marking until they pass, because it doesn't take long to get past a cyclist, and then move back over. It provides some extra protection for the cyclist.

There are all kinds of things like this, and we certainly intend to work with the driving schools in Ontario to try to get this information across. There are many more things that I could explain. Fortunately, this information is available. We teach it in our Can-Bike courses, which have been picked up by the Metropolitan Toronto Police Force for its bicycle officers. There is a lot of good information out there. We need help in making sure we can get this information to drivers, so anything that can be done through the graduated licensing process certainly will help the situation.

Mr Lopes: We hope that the information we've provided you today and the generous pieces on the board that we've had made for you give an indication of the concerns that we have in terms of bicycle safety education for motorists. We hope that you think differently as a result of it. We hope that this increases the understanding of bicycles and the hazards they have currently on the road, and that in future when you're discussing graduated licensing, you decide to include bicycle education as part of your graduated licensing proposals.

Mr Gary Wilson: Thank you very much for coming to make this presentation. I'm really pleased to see this subject being raised in this discussion. I am a bicyclist and was strictly a bicyclist, but that's before I was elected. In Kingston it's quite a different thing, and a lot of my fellow citizens in Kingston don't know how people can cycle in Toronto. It just seems too hazardous. But it has its hazards even in Kingston, and I'm pleased to say that there is a growing awareness, partly through the public health unit as well as the police departments there, to raise the awareness among both cyclists and the non-cycling public.

It seems to me that this is an important area. A consideration would be that bicycles are available to people of all ages, and the kids, if they're riding bicycles, are going to have this awareness of what it means to be a bicyclist before they get their drivers' licenses. That will be one of the things that will change what appears to be the ignorance of a lot of motorists about what it means to bicycle.

I was just wondering what we can do to encourage more kids to bicycle. Since we haven't got a lot of time here, what would be the single most important thing; for instance, bicycle sheds? That's a concern to me, with my kids getting bikes ripped off because there's no place to park their bikes. Yes, Paul?

Mr Rappell: I can provide some input into this, hopefully as briefly as I can. Your question would require days to answer. Okay?

Mr Gary Wilson: Yes, and your course. I want to point out that course and your suggestion to emphasize that driving instructors should be taking that course.

Mr Rappell: In addition to my duties with the cycling committee, I'm a Can-Bike instructor through the cycling committee. I work on the multiple sclerosis bike tours that operate throughout the summer and have a chance to see a lot of interaction on the roads, but more importantly I'm a parent and a teacher. My personal point of view is to get some form of cycling education, based on Can-Bike and the children's course that we have, into the schools. That's one thing, because unfortunately we're starting from a base of ignorance, basically, where people have been brought up that their cycling education ended when Dad let go of the bicycle seat, and that's been it.

What we get now in the education system are the police officers, who are very well meaning, but they're not schooled in this. They come in once a year to do a bike rodeo and maybe show some films to the primary classes, and that's the extent of it. I work with students and I can see the ignorance of it, the ignorance of the parents and of the students themselves and of other teachers who aren't familiar with it, who are very scared to go out on bikes. I commute every day and I came down here by bike.

If you want a wish list, we could give you a wish list, but we don't have time.

Mr Gary Wilson: Exactly. I think it's important to emphasize though that for kids that is a form of mobility and that would lessen the pressure to get a licence, at least in areas where it's feasible to bicycle.

Mr Rappell: We need a good, ongoing dialogue with all forms of traffic, be they motorist, cyclist or pedestrian, and we need to build up that level of awareness. We've done a lot of work in that from the committee's point of view, but the task is just at the infancy stage, I think.

Ms Wentworth: We would really like to have in the future ideas like, if a student is certified under Can-Bike in high school and then goes on to take driver training, can there be some kind of reduction in costs? Because a lot of the material that we cover is also covered in driver training. It would be nice to have kind of a progression thing, because it would allow students not to give up their bikes because they've got a driver's licence and provide them with the skills to do that safely.

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Ms Sharon Murdock (Sudbury): Just in terms of that and the presentation you made, the level 2 exit test: One of the things that could be suggested under the graduated licence program would be that defensive driving with bicycles on the roadway would be and should be part of the test. My question is whether or not you think it should even be included in the level 1 test, rather than leaving it to the end of the other.

The other thing is that yesterday we had the moped motorcycle association, whatever, and after they made their presentation I said to them that automobile drivers tend to treat bicyclists, particularly at turns, much the same way they treat motorcyclists in their attitude towards them on the roadway and I was wondering if they had ever gotten involved with the bicycle associations that were available or worked together in terms of education and information. They hadn't, but they thought it was a good idea, so I'm just wondering whether or not you have looked at that possibility. Those two questions.

Ms Wentworth: As far as level 1 or level 2 is concerned, I don't think I can comment specifically on where bicycle training can fit in, but I certainly would like to see it considered at all levels. I mean, you get people who drive cars who don't ride bikes. Part of the difficulty in Ontario is that a lot of motorists have never been on a bike, whereas in Europe most of the population that drives also cycles so they kind of understand what it's like to be on the road and tend to give cyclists a little bit more room.

It would be great to make it a requirement of driver training to have cyclist training. But I also think that, as the state of things are right now, with graduated licensing or just in driver training courses, it would be really nice to include the Can-Bike information and make sure it gets through.

You can teach Can-Bike to someone who doesn't know how to ride the bike. It is an on-road course. You have to take people out in traffic and teach them how to make judgements and decisions in traffic. So if they don't know how to ride a bike, they can still get the theoretical part of it so they have some kind of parameters to put the information into. I think that's a very interesting concept.

Mr Daigeler: I think it's important what you're doing there to make us aware and make those who are learning how to drive aware of bicycles and the problems they experience on the road. At the same time, I think, and I'm sure you realize this, that there will have to be quite a bit of responsibility on the bicycling community itself, and I guess on your organization as well, to work with the driving schools and with the people who are actually doing this. Generally I try to stay away from saying, "Well, government has to do it and you have to legislate and you have to do this," because of all the implications that that brings with it. I read in your brief that you are also on the board of the Road Safety Educators' Association, so I'm sure that's part of your mandate and the reason why you are there. But I would say that, in my view, the main responsibility to put across the viewpoints that you've put forward rests not with the government but with you people, frankly, and with the bicyclists and with the people who are involved in teaching others to drive. Therefore, I don't think we should put that on the shoulders of the government. We should say, "Okay, we see a problem, we see a need; let's do something about it."

I would just encourage you to work very closely with the driving schools and the driving safety people and so on. I think there's a lot of room there to still further improve that whole system. I was pleased to see that some of the driving educators are getting together themselves and so on. They're cleaning up their own act. But I really hope that we're not waiting for government, because I think there are a lot of things we can do ourselves to make sure that what you are saying is being heard by those who have the opportunity to follow up on it.

Ms Wentworth: I certainly understand what you're saying and I think that as many partners as we can pull in on getting information out to the public as possible, that's a very important key. But the helmet legislation did pass and most of the people here were involved in the discussions around the concerns of cyclists for safety on the roads. While I don't want to say this one issue is any one group's responsibility, I think the more we can put our heads together and make sure that information gets out -- I think the cycling community feels at times that there's more assistance to motorists in that there's a licensing process and there are certain requirements that drivers and vehicles have to do and things like that. It feels a bit like we're in a catch-up thing. With more and more people riding, we have to get this information out to people to increase safety and prevent injuries. Whenever there's any kind of a legislative thing that has anything to do with the roads and public safety on the roads, I think the cycling communities will be there to say: "Help if you can. Let's find a way to get this information out."

Mr Rappell: Those of us here can personally say the things we have done as members of the committee out on the roads, for example with the SPACE programs we've done with the Metro Toronto police, where we don't just target cyclists, we get pedestrians and motorists and inform them of the way they should be behaving on the roads and sidewalks. But I'd just like to stress that I feel that the government generates the climate, that the push, whether it's by information or by what you put into your legislation, comes from the government. Then we do our part. Our part is limited by who we are and the resources that we have. But the initial shove has to come from you people.

Mr Turnbull: I'd just like to comment on what an excellent job you've done over the years of promoting bike safety. I still think there's a long way to go. When I see cyclists at night without any lights on their bikes, I just go wild. It's almost an invitation to get into an accident.

We've had somewhat of a discussion over the last couple of days over whether driver education should be a mandatory component of graduated licences. When you start talking about mandatory driving education, the problem of course occurs when you get into rural areas. It's much more difficult for people to have access to the schools. So I wonder if you could comment on your views on whether it should be mandatory, because I take it you believe that within driver education they should build in an awareness component of bicycle habits. The other side of the coin would be, depending on your answer, do you think there should be some mandatory requirements for bicyclists in terms of being able to ride so that they don't do wrong things?

Mr Lopes: On behalf of the committee, I think the interest of the committee was to come here to give you an understanding of what it is that we would require or request that the government look at, if at all, in deciding for graduated licensing. The key concern was that education is a primary focus for us and that if there is driver training, education on cycling should be a key concern and a key component of that training.

We all have our personal views on the issue of whether it should be mandated or not. We're not here, unfortunately, at liberty to give our personal views, but we are here on behalf of the city cycling committee to respond that education is a primary focus and that any driver education provided on cyclists is going to benefit all parties concerned.

Interjection: You could be a politician.

Mr Bill Murdoch (Grey-Owen Sound): That's a good political answer.

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Ms Wentworth: Can I just bring one more thing up with the Can-Bike training? At this point in time, this program is just being developed and we're trying to get information out to the general public to encourage them to take the course. At this point in time, we've sent instructors to Peterborough, to Kingston and to Hamilton to set up Can-Bike programs to certify instructors in those areas. We really need some assistance from the provincial government on that, because you can't offer courses if you don't have instructors, and it's very, very difficult.

I'll just go on record in saying that the cycling committee wants to take the Can-Bike program and make it as readily in the community as Red Cross swimming classes or St John Ambulance classes. Starting from where we're at, we've got an enormous task at hand and we need all the help we can get.

Mr Lopes: Mr Chairman, thank you for having us here. The Toronto City Cycling Committee appreciates the time and your patience and we hope it's been a learning experience for not only us but also yourselves.

The Chair: I thank the Toronto City Cycling Committee and each of you. Of course, I think none of you are strangers to this committee in terms of dealing with Bill 124, the bicycle helmet legislation. I will offer my personal opinion that I think government has at all levels some role to play in making sure that we deal with very serious public safety issues, and when I look at the traffic volumes today and I picture in my head an underskilled, untrained motorist and an underskilled, untrained person on a bicycle having to deal with what I consider is inadequate municipal infrastructure to accommodate cars and cyclists, it is little wonder to me that there are some of the disasters we see. So I support the initiatives that you bring before this committee today and have in the past and thank you very much on behalf of all members of the committee for appearing.

MADD CANADA

The Chair: The next scheduled witness is Mr John Bates. Good morning, sir, and welcome. You've been allocated one half-hour for your presentation.

Mr John Bates: I could go on until the end of the week about this whole topic.

I'm from Mothers Against Drunk Driving. We represent the automobile crash victims. We probably have a greater stake in what is going on here now than any other single group of people that could appear here. We represent the tens of thousands of families and people who have been killed and injured in car crashes, most of which are totally preventable and should never have happened in the first place, which is quite clearly the most serious social problem that we face in this country today. We have five members of Parliament to hear this. Over at employment equity there are 30 waiting. It puts things in perspective.

I come here this morning with feelings of both satisfaction and frustration: satisfaction that we're finally approaching what I think is an epochal moment in the history of automobile safety in this country, but frustration and anger in wondering why it's taken so long. This isn't something that just popped up the other day. This has been going on now for years. I wrote my first editorial when I was with Maclean Hunter in 1983 after having talked to Herb Simpson.

This battle has been waged by people whose only interest is saving lives. That's all. We have no other interest in this thing; we just want people to stop killing themselves on our roads.

If a disease wreaked the same havoc on society that car crashes do, look what we would do. We'd close down the schools, we'd have screaming headlines in the papers, we'd have compulsory inoculations, we'd have quarantines. We wouldn't care whether it was fair or not, we'd do whatever we had to do to conquer that disease. But it's not; it's just people killing themselves in cars, and somehow the government really doesn't care very much about that.

Car crashes kill more of our young people than all other causes of death combined. It's not, as it says in the motorist booklet here, the leading cause. It kills more of our young people than all other causes of death combined.

What are we going to do about it? We're going to have another hearing.

Of all those people killed on the roads, 40% are under the age of 25, a dreadful waste. It's still the largest cause of accidental death of any age. When a young person dies in this province, the chances are overwhelming it will be in a car crash.

Look at all the other causes that have somehow captured the front pages and the interest of the Legislature. For example, young persons are not likely to die from AIDS or drug overdoses or being murdered. You can take all those things and add them up and they're nowhere near the tragedy caused by car crashes. Hundreds of thousands of Canadians are either put in the hospital or permanently maimed every year by car crashes. You're at far more risk -- any of us are -- from a drunk behind the wheel of a car than you are from a thug in an alley. So let's start doing something. The cost is in the billions.

I'm not suggesting there's some hierarchy of deaths and victims; there's not. Any premature death is terrible. Let's get things in perspective.

There is only one answer, and that's what the victims of drunk drivers have been preaching for a decade now. You know and we know there are people driving cars in this province right now who ought not to be driving anything anywhere.

Do you know right now you can get a licence in this province without ever having driven on the road? You can get your licence because your uncle, who can't teach to drive anyway, taught you how to turn and how to get past the test. He'd go out and you would go to an ersatz kind of parking lot, behave yourself while the instructor's in the car or the examiner's in the car, and then it's quite all right for a 16-year-old to pack a whole bunch of kids in his car and drive out to the corner of Highway 427 and Highway 401 at 5 o'clock at night. That is sheer madness. It's irresponsible and dumb that this is even allowed to go on and that it's been allowed to go on this long.

While we're having this hearing here now, today, 234 Canadians are going to be injured, and 3.2 Ontarians are going to die before 5 o'clock tonight if the averages hold true. What are we going to do about it? I don't know.

Another thing, there are 6.5 million licensed drivers in this province. We know a lot about these people. We know how old they are, their ages, their sex and everything else, how many points they've got. Another thing we know about them, and we're doing absolutely nothing about, is that 10% of them are alcohol abusers, the most dangerous drivers on the road.

To put it more succinctly, there are 650,000 drivers on the roads right now who are chronic drunks and we're not doing anything about it. Those are the people who are most likely to kill you, they're the ones, and we're doing nothing. I'll suggest a way to deal with them later.

I guess the whole watchword of this committee should be that we must make sure that only those who will drive safely on our roads can drive at all, and it doesn't really matter what we do to get to that goal; that's where we should be going.

You're going to hear a lot of nonsense preached here. Some people are going to come and say, "The graduated licence is not enforceable." That's claptrap. It's as enforceable as any other licence. We basically have seven licences now, all the way from A to G, A being a tractor semi-trailer licence, and the G being the one that most of us have. They're all enforceable or unenforceable to exactly the same degree.

You may hear people, probably automotive journalists -- you read it in the papers all time -- who say the speed limit should be raised. People who say the speed limit should be raised are just plain stupid and uninformed. There are volumes of statistics to show that speed is a major factor in highway crashes. When I was in school, force equalled mass times acceleration. It still does as far as I know, and the crash force impact is the weight of the car and the speed it's going. It's all geometrically proportional.

What about those people who say they need their cars and therefore this is unfair to them? That's a red herring, because if they really needed their cars, you could easily put a restrictive endorsement on their licence if they have to drive their sick mother somewhere or something like that. They could have that endorsement by their local registrar.

They say it's not fair to young drivers. Well, it's not aimed at young drivers anyway; it's aimed at inexperienced drivers. Anyway, I don't care if it's fair to them or not. I couldn't care less. I really couldn't. I'd rather have the young people treated unfairly and be alive than treated ever so fairly and be dead. I don't think that even enters into it, that it's unfair to young drivers. As far as I know, leadership never has been a question of a popularity contest. It never has been. You do what you have to do to save their lives whatever that is. If that means raising the driving age, being really nasty, let's do that too. We don't recommend that.

I'd thought of preparing a new presentation for this committee today, but I started digging back in my files. I made my first presentation to the Honourable Ed Fulton, Minister of Transportation and Communications, in May 1986. I'm just including that presentation because absolutely nothing has changed, nothing. Virtually what we recommended to the Honourable Ed Fulton in 1986 is roughly what is coming along now and we're quite happy about that.

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PRIDE, People to Reduce Impaired Driving Everywhere, by the way, was the beginning of our organization; we then melted into MADD, Mothers Against Drunk Driving. If you go down this presentation, partway down it says: "The carnage on highways reached epidemic proportions with 5,000 Canadians, 1,991 in Ontario alone, dying from car crashes. Tens of thousands more will be permanently injured" That's what we were saying seven years ago. There were 3.2 people being killed then; it's down to 3.1 now, seven years later. That's not because of anything that the government's done or anybody's done or driver training has done. It's because of increased use of seatbelts, radial tires, anti-lock braking system brakes, disks and the whole bit. That's what's caused the reductions. The injuries have gone up; fatalities have gone down. The crash rate has remained pretty much the same.

We somehow think that driving a car is a right. It darn well isn't. It's a very limited privilege. We decide how old you have to be, where you can drive, how fast you can do and all the rest. It's no right at all. That's been decided by the Supreme Court of Canada when the RIDE program was taken to the Supreme Court by people who said, "This is not constitutional." Well, it darn well is constitutional and the Supreme Court of Canada said the RIDE program is because driving is not a right. If it was a right, you wouldn't need a licence at all to do it. It's a privilege granted.

Go over to page 2 of the old presentation which says, "Drivers between the ages of 16 and 20 make up 5% of the driving population...for 13% of all traffic accidents, 70% of impaired and 18% of all fatal crashes." For the others, I've already said the rest of that.

It doesn't matter what we do to build safer roads and safer cars, put crash parts on cars, put in air bags and all the rest of it. It doesn't matter what we do. We've done as much as we can really. I don't know how we could build much safer cars than we have now. That means we have to put in a system of driver licensing which is going to bring it back all the way down to make sure that only those people who can drive safely will be driving.

The problem is that no jurisdiction in North America, as far as I know, has really moved its driver training or driver licensing system out of the 1920s. When drivers' licences were originally introduced, they were nothing more than a kind of receipt for a small payment. My dad got his driver's licence in the mail. They charged him $5, I think it was. He was incensed.

Later somebody thought, "Gee whiz, we should be having some degree of competency behind the wheel." So they said, "If you can do a three-point turn and a parallel park and have a rudimentary knowledge of the Highway Traffic Act, you can have a licence." Hardly anybody gets killed three-point turning or parallel parking as far as I know. In fact, there's no statistic to even measure it, yet that's what they're taught to do. There's been very little progress since that time.

Furthermore, when we first started licensing cars, we had no idea that we could have cars that would cruise at 150 kilometres per hour all day long. We had no idea we'd have this kind of congestion that we've got now. We had no idea that we'd have trucks that would gross out about 100,000 pounds gross vehicle weight on a regular basis. Now the governments have allowed longer and heavier trucks. I don't know what Ed Philip was talking about. I know he was opposed to it when he was the Minister of Transportation, but now we're having longer trucks. You try passing one of those things on a rainy day, with no mandated splash guards, nothing. If a car's coming the other way, you won't even see him.

I go on from here to say essentially what we want to do. We want to have a three-level system. Essentially, what the government put forward at the press conference in the spring is what we have come out publicly and said we're certainly in favour of, all those things including the blood alcohol concentration of zero. We should have the zero BAC for all drivers.

Anybody ever thought of the inconsistency where everybody's going to say, "Don't drink and drive," but the government says in the law: "No, go ahead. Drink and drive."? You can drink and drive all the way up to having 80 milligrams of alcohol per 1,000 millilitres of blood, the so-called 80. "Go ahead and do that. That's fine. You're supposed to know when you reach there." They should simply say, "Don't drink and drive at all," like airline pilots. Try flying for an airline if you've been drinking within 24 hours. You can't. Why should it be any different for something that's far more dangerous? Why should we have the 80 thing at all?

The graduated licence: I don't have to go into that, because it's essentially what we recommended to the government in 1986. I won't even get into that at all.

Just another point about the graduated licence: Because it moves people up through, it can also move people down again. So now when a senior gets to be, I think it's 80, they have to take a test. If they flunk any part of it, they've lost their licence. There could be a lot of things, but graduated licence could simply say: "Okay, look, you're 80. You're losing your night vision. What we're going to do is jack you back down through the system to a point where you can still drive to the doctor, to the supermarket and to your friends on local roads, but we're not going to let you drive at night and we're not going to let you drive on high-speed roads."

The loss of a licence to a senior is a devastating thing to have happen. They lose their mobility. All of a sudden, at age 80, they may well be dependent on somebody else for the rest of their lives, for their transportation, yet I know a lot of people who are 80 who are very competent drivers.

I was also saying that there's nothing new about this thing. The real father of the graduated licence, of course, is Herb Simpson of the Traffic Injury Research Foundation of Canada. I talked to Herb when I wrote my first editorial at Maclean Hunter. We've been pushing for that, including Herb, I guess, at the first presentation to the Canadian Conference of Motor Transport Administrators in November 1984.

I'll just leave that as it is. Everything that we want is in the proposal now anyway.

I've mentioned several times that our organization is delighted with what your government now intends to introduce. This is a quantum leap forward and it very definitely is, but there's much more to be done, much more.

For example, we want the drinking age raised to 21. This has been the bedrock of MADD's policy. Its rationale is simple. If we can delay the onset of drinking, then we can also delay the onset of drinking and driving. The move was approved unanimously in both Houses in the United States, and all the argument, "It's not fair," and the rest of the nonsense came up. But in this province the government has refused to even consider it. We have asked for a task force just to examine the subject of the drinking age, just a task force like this to look at it and hear deputations. The government's refusal to even look at the idea of raising the drinking age reminds me of the bishops who refused to look through Galileo's telescope because they were afraid he might be right, that the earth was not the centre.

The government, clearly, on the drinking age is more afraid of the light than the dark. They don't want to be put in the position of knowing it's absolutely the right thing to do, but it might not be politically expedient and that is just -- I would use a nasty word if I said what it is. It's just silly that we do not have a task force on the drinking age. The police, the addiction people and the health departments, everybody wants the drinking age raised to 21.

Anyhow, roadside sobriety spot checks known as the RIDE program: It doesn't matter what else you do to stop drinking drivers, if you don't have an enforcement system in place, it won't work. But what we've done now is reduce or eliminate the fund. There is no RIDE program outside of Toronto. Drunks can play a very deadly game of bump cars throughout this province, because the funding for the RIDE program has been taken away. Some of our chapters are trying to fund individual RIDE spot checks. We can't do it. We can do some of it. We can't do a lot of it.

Administrative licence suspension or administrative per se, it's known as in the States: Virtually all authorities agree that penalties for impaired driving certainly must be swift and they must be severe. Police should have the right to take a person's licence or suspend the person's licence on the spot, in the police station when you blow over 0.08 in the Borkenstein breathalyser, on a regularly scheduled and properly taken breathalyser.

People say, "Oh, well." Your breathalyser reading is absolute. It's like turning a light switch on and off. All the breathalyser does is measure the flow of alcohol ions in the breath; that's all. It's absolutely foolproof. If it says it's 0.08, it's 0.08, you better believe it. It's prima facie evidence in court. They go through all sorts of things, but I'll get into that later. Anyhow, if we did that, it would clear the courtrooms out almost immediately, because people, if you suspend their licence on the spot, would want their trial or plead guilty so they could start their one-year suspension sooner.

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Seizing vehicles of suspended drivers: Some 40,000 people in Toronto right now are driving with no licence of any kind. We say when somebody is driving on a suspended licence their car should be forfeited to the crown on the spot and sold at auction. I don't care whose car it is, whether a rental car or Aunt Minnie's car; it doesn't matter. If they're driving under suspension, you simply lift their car. Those people who are driving under suspension are very deadly drivers. They had their licence suspended for a reason. Either we care about those 3.2 people who are going to die today or we don't. We're going to have to put in some very draconian kind of measures if we hope to answer this thing.

Permanent licence suspension: It's proven that most of the fatal crashes in this province are caused by people who blow 0.165 or better. These people are so stupidly drunk it's lucky they can get the key in the lock. Those are the people who are going to kill you.

We say on the second offence -- you give them the one chance, their one-year licence suspension and give them all the education; if they do it again you take their licence away for ever. Like I said, I was going to get to how we get the chronic drunks off the road. That's how you do it. Impaired driving is an odd thing. You're not measuring what people are doing -- following too close or something. It's the condition of the driver. So the only way you're going to find this chronic drunk is in the spot check or in a crash. Once you find him, and you find him on the second offence, he's gone for good and we're all safe because he's not going to be on the road again.

Licence endorsements: There are cars on the road that I don't think ought to be on the road at all, like the Corvette, the LX7, some of the Firebirds, the five-litre Mustang and so forth; the Taurus SHO particularly. I believe we should have a licence endorsement; people have to have special training to drive these cars.

Let's talk about the SHO for a minute. The gyroscopic effect we learn in high school or public school, as far as that goes: If you have a gyroscope going this way and you apply a force at right angles, it creates a force right angles to the cage. What happens with the SHO when the front wheels break away -- it has this enormously huge engine, absolutely unnecessary to go down and buy a quart of milk or something -- and the wheels start going like so, it creates a force that way. And what's over there? Oncoming traffic. You'd have to be a race driver to handle that car -- anybody who would go out and buy one.

The same thing with Corvettes: There's no reason for those cars to be on the road at all in the first place, largely because the people who tend to buy that kind of car have entirely the wrong idea about what driving is all about. It's just madness that they even allow them.

Leaving the scene: The way it stands now, an impaired driver is far better to leave the scene of a crash than he is to stay and face the music. We would like to see leaving the scene raised to the same level as, say, a second-year case.

Two-hour limit: I recently asked both Pierre Blais, the federal Attorney General -- he was; I guess he still is -- and Doug Lewis, the federal Solicitor General, as he was then, why we have a mandatory two-hour limit. These are two top law officers in the country and they don't know why. They said: "I don't know why, John. I have no idea. We just do." If we raised that two-hour limit to three hours, we'd suddenly catch a lot more impaired drivers and get them off the road. Just make it a three-hour limit rather than a two-hour limit. We can always backtrack. It's silliness.

I'll simply conclude this. As well, you certainly will hear criticism of this proposal and all people have different kinds of suggestions. We urge you to stay the course with exactly what you presented in May of this year at the thing at Sunnybrook. You can do that with the absolute certain knowledge that you're going to start saving lives the minute you do it. For too long now this tragedy is allowed to go on. The fact that we're still sitting here having hearings about it is a sense of profound frustration for me. Why can't we just get on and do it and let people worry about it afterwards? Saving those 90,000 people going to the hospital is a heck of a lot more important than sitting around talking about it.

We applaud the action you're taking. While a few people may be inconvenienced for a short time, that's a small price to pay for the good of us all.

One thing also, the future generations will look back and recognize that what you're doing here is a watershed moment in the history of automobile safety in this country. Don't listen to the naysayers. Don't be perturbed because somebody says it's not fair; if somebody somewhere says they might want their car. We can handle all those things. Let's do something that will protect us from the new drivers and protect the new drivers themselves.

I'll just conclude with that. If I sound a little bit upset, I am, and rightly so, I think.

Mr Daigeler: As far as I'm concerned, the submission is pretty well self-evident.

Mr Sean G. Conway (Renfrew North): You make a very interesting argument about applying this principle at the other end of the age scale. Most of the time when we talk about new drivers we're talking, by and large, about young drivers, though not exclusively. I was particularly struck by what you said about older drivers and the fact that the current regime, as I understand it, is, as you described it, absolute: If you fail any part of the test, you're out. Whether you realize it or not, you make a very moving case for those people and for the devastating impact that has on people.

I know exactly what you talk about and that case, I think, can be extrapolated a little bit. Those of us from the hinterland have been talking a little bit about that, perhaps not very convincingly, to some people. I'm just interested to ask perhaps somebody from the ministry, is there any contemplation of applying, as Mr Bates suggests, that notion of a graduated concept to older drivers, particularly those people who now at age 80 are required to come in and do as Mr Bates and as other witnesses have talked about?

Mr Paul Levine: Right now, within the ministry, we are completing some research which was undertaken recently regarding elderly drivers, including quite an extensive literature search on the matter. It is anticipated that we will move from that research phase into the policy development work that will be necessary.

It is also interesting to note that we can tie it into graduated licensing and in fact it has already been termed "graduated de-licensing." As I say, the research work that has been undertaken fairly recently is just now coming to an end and it will take a little bit more time.

We also anticipate using some of the evaluation of the graduated licensing program being introduced to evaluate the effectiveness and our ability to properly enforce and monitor that type of thing. There is still work to be done before we reach that stage of introducing graduated de-licensing, but certainly we do anticipate that it is coming -- the look at the policy.

Mr Conway: I should know enough to engage this discussion and I probably shouldn't but I will, and that's the drinking age. I'm 42 years of age and I remember those happy days when the drinking age was 21. I remember them well. I lived near the Quebec border. I still live near the Quebec border. I share with you your revulsion about the problems we have with drinking and driving and, in some ways, I probably want to be as tough as you want to be, for all of the eloquent and compassionate arguments that you have advanced, except I remember those days and I'm not at all confident that, as tough as you and I might want to be, we're going to be able to succeed if we don't get the state of New York and the province of Quebec, in my part of the world, eastern Ontario, to move along with us.

Mr Bates: The state of New York is 21. It's the universal age in the United States already, and none of the kids in the States become unhinged because of it, and they're seeing a reduction in deaths.

Mr Conway: Let me just stick to the Quebec border, which is where the action has usually been in my part of the world.

Mr Bates: Mr Conway, one of the absurdities of this whole thing is that the police in Windsor are now calling for a 21-year-old gambling age because they think the kids are going to come across from Detroit and go into the place and gamble and they're going to start drinking in there. So we have a 21-year-old gambling age but not drinking age; kind of silly.

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Mr Turnbull: Mr Bates, a lot of what you say has great resonance with me. I know you've been following this issue very carefully and you will know that since I become PC Transportation critic in 1991, I've been pushing very hard to get this legislation through.

Mr Bates: You read my stuff.

Mr Turnbull: Yes, indeed, and it was very useful. I'll tell you a story first before I ask you a question. It relates to the question of the drinking age. I have to tell you that I don't think it's realistic to change the drinking age, and I'll tell you the reason why. My brother, who is now dead, ultimately died from an auto accident that he had when he was drunk. In England, the legal drinking age was 18. At 16 my brother went out drinking. There was nothing my father could do to stop him, much as he tried; he went out. Eventually, he went to Australia and got in a terrible auto accident when he was drunk -- he was much older than 21 -- and then later on he had yet another bad drunk accident and he was in hospital for a year. Some 20 years later, last year, he died as a result of the auto accident he had then, because he had large blood transfusions which eventually led to a buildup of iron in the liver and he died from it.

I understand what you're saying, but I have to tell you it's my belief that legislation can only go so far. I don't think we can legislate that people don't drink. I think they will break the law if we make the law --

Mr Bates: I don't think there's a question in the world of what you're saying, that if you have a drinking age of 18 years, 16-year-olds will get it. What you're saying is typical of the thousands of tragedies that we face every day. I feel for what you're saying. But the thing is that it doesn't matter what age you have. You can raise it to 45 and younger people will get it anyway. There are two things, though. First of all, most people do obey the law. Second, it puts a very strong tool in the hands of parents saying, "No, you cannot go out drinking, because you're not old enough; the law says you can't."

If you raise it to 21, maybe some 18-year-olds will get it. People seem to hang around in peer groups within three years of their own age. As soon as it was dropped down to 18 in June 1972, 14-year-olds started to show up in detox centres. That was after it was dropped from 21 to 18 as a result of the Vietnam war, the usual things: If they're old enough to fight for their country, they're old enough to drink. Who said so? It doesn't make any sense. You're old enough to do one thing; you're not old enough to do another. It doesn't matter what age you set it at, but what you do is you raise the average age of consumption. You don't really raise the drinking age at all. Instead of 18, 17, 16 and 15, it goes from 21 to 19 and 18, something along that line. In other words, a 16-year-old probably doesn't have a 21-year-old peer to get it for him.

Mr Turnbull: The other thing which had great resonance with me was two points: one of graduated delicensing, which I believe we should do rather than just in one fell swoop taking licences away, recognizing that older people can probably safely drive in certain conditions but not others. The other thing was the question of those people who drive without a licence, usually without insurance too, that we seize their car. Where you lost me, quite frankly, is when you started saying sell the car even if it was a rental car. I think the people who own the rental car cannot be made responsible for the fact that the person was drunk. If they've come in sober to rent the car, I don't think we should start --

Mr Bates: It's not a matter of being sober when they rent the car; I'm saying when they drive under suspension. You simply pass a regulation in the Highway Traffic Act saying it is illegal to loan or rent your car to an unlicensed driver. All you really have to do is say: "You don't have a licence. You can't have the car." The penalty is to lose it if you do.

Mr Turnbull: Okay, fair enough.

Mr Cooper: Mr Bates, you've taken a fairly hard line and I can understand why. There's the one thing, though: When you say that when you get caught for your second drinking-driving offence your licence would be suspended for ever, obviously, politically, that is unacceptable. One of the propositions that has been put to this committee so far is that maybe if you're caught for your second suspension for drinking and driving or loss of 15 points, you drop back down to the G-1 class where you have zero blood alcohol and you go through the training program. Would that be acceptable as a compromise?

Mr Bates: Not at all. We know a lot about second offenders and drinking and driving. We know that they're going to have a BAC of over 0.165. They're going to be the chronic drunks we're talking about. We know we have to keep them off the road, period. The options you've got: Do you want to drop this guy down a bit and have him go out and kill somebody or do you want to take his licence away and make sure he's sitting home watching television? That's the option.

Mr Cooper: The point is that with suspension for ever, what about people in rehabilitation? I've seen a number of people go into places like Alcoholics Anonymous and never drink again.

Mr Bates: After two years, which is the mandatory suspension anyway on a second offence, if they could prove to a medical tribunal that they no longer have a drinking problem, then we'd accept them back on to level 1 and let them stay there for a while and let the registrar of motor vehicles or somebody assess what that person does. But if you catch them at that level 1 again drinking and driving, they'd have to be gone.

Mr Cooper: That's the point: At level 1 it's zero blood alcohol.

Mr Bates: Yes, exactly. But they're going to lose it for two years anyway on the second offence. That's federal law.

The Chair: Mr Bates, on behalf of the entire committee I want to thank you for your presentation this morning, and let me say that I certainly am sympathetic with the frustration you bring with you to the committee this morning, and justifiably so. I think that as members of this committee we can have a limited effect about determining or trying to correct what has happened or the outcome of what has happened in the past, but we certainly have the ability as legislators and as a government to influence what will happen in the future. I think certainly there is that commitment among all the members of this committee. I very much appreciate your presentation this morning and trust that you'll stay in touch with the committee.

Mr Bates: I will; I appreciate it.

The Chair: Mr Conway, did you have a point?

Mr Conway: Just for the committee, two things: I raised one yesterday. I really do hope that before we are finished these hearings we get a chance to have a group of 16- or 17-year-old students, even if somebody has to walk over to Central Tech and grab the first five teenagers you see.

Secondly, the more that this goes on, the more I'm interested to hear from somebody from the OPP enforcement branch. I think there's a benefit. An awful lot of things are being said around here that assume certain things about enforcement that may or may not be true. I don't know whether it's possible, but I certainly wouldn't mind, before we're finished, getting somebody from the provincial police or Metro to come in and just talk a bit about life as they see it.

The Chair: Noted.

Mr Paul Klopp (Huron): For other information, on the one report we had this morning, they had the USDA with regard to curfews, and it was interesting to me that New York is 62%, Pennsylvania was 69% reducing crashes, but then we went to Maryland and it went to 40% and Louisiana 25%. Can we get the data to find out the curfew information on how they do things in Louisiana, New York and all that? Not right at this moment, but just over the course of the next --

The Chair: The request is noted. The ministry has indicated it could probably provide that information and will undertake to get it to us.

We are in recess. If people would show up at 2 pm sharp, I'd appreciate it.

The committee recessed from 1210 to 1400.

DOMINION OF CANADA GENERAL INSURANCE CO

The Chair: The first witness this afternoon is the Dominion of Canada General Insurance Co. Good afternoon and welcome. You've been allocated one half-hour, and the committee would like about half of that, if possible, for questions and answers and dialogue.

Mr George Cooke: My name is George Cooke. I'm the president and chief executive officer of the Dominion of Canada General Insurance Co and I will try to confine my introductory remarks to something less than 15 minutes and look forward to the exchange.

Good afternoon, Mr Chairman, members of the committee. Thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today on behalf of the Dominion of Canada General Insurance Co.

The Dominion is the seventh-largest property and casualty insurer in Canada, employing 1,100 people, of whom 785 live in Ontario. About half of our business is Ontario auto. Appendix 1 to my remarks provides additional detail about the Dominion.

Along with the Insurance Bureau of Canada, we have supported the graduated licensing concept since the early 1980s. We have also supported measures that helped to raise awareness about the hazards of drinking and driving, increased seatbelt usage and have always supported enhanced road safety measures. Now we are in support of a truly graduated licensing system.

The Dominion is appearing before the committee today to express its support for the concept of graduated licensing and to support the program submitted to you by IBC. If graduated licensing is appropriately implemented in Ontario, it will save lives and reduce injuries resulting from traffic accidents. The IBC submission details the evidence supporting this proposition.

We know that graduated licensing is a key to reducing the large number of people who are seriously injured or killed on our roads each year in preventable accidents. Graduated licensing has been in effect in New Zealand since 1987 and early results indicate at least a 25% reduction in death and serious injury among novice drivers.

The Dominion asked to appear before you today to ensure that you hear our views directly and are given the opportunity to question or challenge them directly. We are respectful of the work of this committee.

I have been actively involved in the graduated licensing debate as a director of IBC, an advocate before the editorial boards of the Toronto Star and the Globe and Mail, which subsequently endorsed graduated licensing, and as a guest on television programs. I've also met with the Minister of Transportation to advocate the merits of graduated licensing.

Having indicated our support for the concept of graduated licensing, the Dominion is concerned with the specific proposal placed before you by the government. We commend the government for introducing a program and for its will to proceed. However, we have two major concerns. They are (1) that the government's proposal is not truly graduated, and (2) the length of time required for introductory instruction is too short.

The IBC submission addresses our first concern in that it recommends that, "In order to progress to level 2, the learning driver must maintain a conviction-free record for the entire duration of level 1," and goes on to indicate "and pass a basic road test." If that recommendation is implemented, it's our belief that it will help to ensure that the new driver has fully acquired the necessary skills and experience to be a safe driver before progressing to level 2. I should specifically note that we are recommending that the driver be conviction-free for 12 months before becoming eligible to pass to level 2.

The conviction-free amendment would promote respect for the responsibility involved in operating a vehicle and reinforce the importance of abiding by the rules of the road.

Our second concern, that the length of time required for introductory instruction is too short, is also addressed through the IBC submission. Under the government plan, it is still possible for a new driver to progress to level 2 after only nine months, at which time there are virtually no restrictions in place. The IBC proposal recommends several level 2 restrictions to rectify this problem.

To reiterate, like the IBC, the Dominion wants more comprehensive controls for novice drivers during the full two-year driving period. Full driving privileges should not be given until the required driving experience is gained in a controlled setting.

This sounds very technical, and when you read these submissions it can sound almost too technical. I've relied on a very simplistic analogy to try to make my point and I'd like to share it with you.

When attempting to illustrate the learning process involved in graduated licensing, I have often compared it to a person attempting to learn to swim. It's unusual for someone to learn to swim in deep, treacherous water. Rather, the learning process takes place at the shallow end of a swimming pool or near the shore of a lake, where risk is controlled and reduced. Similarly, one does not typically progress from a beginner's swimming class to a junior or senior class without proving that the necessary skills and judgement have been acquired. Strict supervision is in place in all three levels to recognize the change in circumstances and the difficulty of the new tasks to be undertaken. In fact, at the time when I was taking swimming instruction, I was not permitted to even try the test necessary to move to the next level until the instructor had determined that sufficient skill and judgement had been developed.

The analogy is not perfect, but I think it helps to focus on our two concerns: the first, that new drivers if not conviction-free for 12 months should not be allowed to progress to level 2, and the second, that it takes time to develop, encourage and support the required skills and judgement necessary to operate vehicles unsupervised.

Last winter, when appearing before the standing committee on finance and economic affairs, dealing with Bill 164, we highlighted the need to introduce graduated licensing and other road safety measures at the same time as the expanded no-fault program is introduced. We still hold these views. It appears that Bill 164 will become real on January 1, 1994. This sets a very tough time target.

Thank you very much. Those are my introductory comments, and I would be very pleased to respond as appropriately as I may.

Mr Turnbull: I think it certainly has merit, what you're suggesting, but can we be a little bit more specific about -- for example, yesterday one of the presenters suggested that perhaps we should initially start drivers off at dawn to dusk and then in a secondary stage go midnight to 5 and then in the third stage -- maybe within level 1, dawn to dusk, and halfway through you then progress to the prohibition to midnight to 5. Is that the kind of thing you have in mind?

Mr George Cooke: First of all, I don't think there's any completely correct answer, or if there is, we certainly don't, to my knowledge, have the evidence to support one variation over another. I think the trick is to find something that's workable and, to the extent possible, enforceable, that people can comply with or will comply with.

I suspect part of the challenge that those drafting the proposal had to meet was to find something that was restrictive enough to allow someone to develop the experience and judgement required and at the same time not so restrictive as to be difficult to enforce or sufficiently restrictive that people wouldn't voluntarily comply.

I have no better capacity to judge whether a threephase time restriction would be better than a two than any of you, and I guess what we're commending to you is some form of time-of-day restriction through the period. IBC has picked on two, and because we have no better alternative to support, we support that kind of period, but there's no magic in it, from my point of view.

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Mr Turnbull: Let us assume that we go with the midnight till 5 prohibition in level 1. Would it be your suggestion that we need to have an accompanying experienced driver in level 2 during those additional new experiences, being the midnight to 5 and the 400 series highway driving?

Mr George Cooke: I suspect that something that must have been in the minds of the drafters of the proposal was the phenomenon for a young driver, as opposed to a new driver who was not young, and the sort of high school prom scenario where post-midnight, after partying for a period of time, they were to return here or there or whatever. I suspect, although I don't know this, that some of those time periods and some of the supervision requirements and the age requirements for the supervisor were selected in such a way to try to address some of the specific circumstances associated with a young driver who is new as opposed to an older driver who is new, and are intended to capture indirectly maturity considerations, as opposed to necessarily driving skill.

Mr Turnbull: I'm asking you, as a representative of an insurance company that has a very strong vested interest, what is it that you're suggesting?

Mr George Cooke: We are supporting the IBC position, per se.

Mr Turnbull: In total?

Mr George Cooke: In total.

Mr Turnbull: So you would like to see this redrafted to totally reflect the IBC model.

Mr George Cooke: Correct.

Mr Turnbull: Thank you.

Mr Murdoch: Just before we go on, the way I see it, you're thinking maybe the graduated licence should be a little longer. Now, I'll make it clear that I think --

Mr George Cooke: Sorry, not longer than two years. We just think that there should be more restrictions in place during the two-year period.

Mr Murdoch: Okay. I'll make it quite clear: I think that this is a good idea, the graduated licence; I have no problem with it.

But we do have the concerns in rural and northern Ontario. It's a little different than it is in urban Ontario, like here in Toronto or Windsor, where we have transportation and we have a different system set up. We've talked over the last couple of days about different things maybe in rural Ontario where kids in high school want to play on the basketball team and things like that.

Mr Conway: You've got a real one here, so ask him to reminisce about his own experiences, because if you don't, I'm going to.

Mr Murdoch: I thought I'd leave it for you, Sean, because I know you're better at it than I. It's just that we think maybe there has to be something maybe different for rural and northern people than here in the urban, because the fact is that they have further distances to go and there's no transit system. If you live 40 kilometres away from your high school, you're going to have to find an adult, the way it's set up now, to ride home with you and things like that. So have you thought about that?

Mr George Cooke: I have, actually. It may surprise you -- it obviously won't surprise Mr Conway -- but I was born and raised in northeastern Ontario in a small community some 100 miles north of North Bay. So I haven't totally lost my capacity to relate to the circumstance that you're talking about.

I think there are several things that the committee should understand, and I say these very seriously. You can't design a bill that's going to encompass every circumstance. It's a question of whether you're doing public policy with a bit of a blunt axe or whether you're trying to do it with a scalpel. There are some tradeoffs that people have to make.

I guess my second observation would be that clearly, there are public policy benefits to putting a program in place that will reduce injuries and save lives. That will happen whether it's in northern Ontario or whether it's in southern Ontario.

As a teenager growing up in the north, I was actually exposed to much more severe restrictions than are contained in either the IBC proposal or the government's proposal, by virtue of something called parents. We were from a community that brought with it a great deal of enthusiasm and ability to find solutions to these problems and we worked with it. Parents drove children or older brothers and sisters or whatever the case may be and we somehow or other managed to get by.

I guess the phenomenon perhaps of driving from Renfrew to Smiths Falls or something like that would be a fairly lengthy distance, but there are risks inherent in that kind of drive on those highways that are not overwhelmingly different than the ride from Burlington to Oshawa. I think what you have to do is realize that people can come up with creative solutions to these kinds of problems when the greater public good is the resulting benefactor.

Mr Murdoch: So when Sean and I are out in the high schools and the students --

Mr George Cooke: You're going to be unpopular.

Mr Murdoch: We're going to tell them that -- well, we just think something creative, and that won't solve the problem. I understand, and we haven't got an answer on it yet and we've been looking for it. It's just that in the past, I have and other people have criticized Queen's Park for setting up bills and laws that sort of are urban-oriented, and they don't seem to take into consideration that there's a whole rural Ontario and a northern Ontario out there. I don't want to get the perception that this bill's going to be like that. We're trying to find an answer, because I think, again, it's a good idea, but if the perception in rural Ontario and northern Ontario is that this is another urban bill being set up, then it's going to be harder to sell.

My daughter's 16 and she has her licence now and she goes to work. She has a part-time job, so she can drive back and forth. But if graduated licensing came in now and she didn't have her licence, she wouldn't be able to have that job, or I would have had to take her to work.

Mr George Cooke: Or, alternatively, you would have had to find some other arrangement, be it a car pool, a shared drive with another employee or a mother or father or aunt or uncle, something like that.

Mr Murdoch: It's not that easy.

Mr George Cooke: No, I appreciate that, but on the other hand, I suggest to you that in my own experience, I don't consider myself too underprivileged to have come from the north -- in fact, I'm quite proud of it -- and we've found ways around those problems.

Ms Murdock: Just on that point, I'm from Sudbury -- actually, 20 kilometres north of Sudbury -- and my high school was 40 kilometres away from my home, so I am definitely in the group that both Mr Conway and Mr Murdoch keep using as an example.

Under the present system, and I think this is the answer, if I go out and get a 365, I still need an accompanying driver with me. Whether it's under a level 1 graduated system or not, I still need that, so you still have to call home and get your parents to drive you or the teacher drives you home or whatever. At level 2 there is no accompanying driver, so that there is no real change except for the time frame that it's a minimum of eight months with a driver education program. For eight months, you're going to have to rely on parents or whatever, which you still have to do under the existing system. So I think that's the answer.

On Tuesday when I came into this committee, I must admit that I was thinking how inconvenient it was going to be for my high school 40 miles away kind of thing. But in reality, I've been completely convinced by all the presenters that we shouldn't be making any exemptions, because a driver is a driver, a road is a road, and they all have to learn and get experience.

Mr George Cooke: I would add to that, if I could, that one has to balance the very specific circumstances that someone in the north might face -- or, for that matter, someone in rural southwestern Ontario, which also has very similar situations in parts of it, as I'm sure the east has as well -- with the broader achievement that's possible in terms of saving lives and reducing injury. If you'd had a chance to chat with the families of people who have had their children, or in fact themselves, injured in these kinds of mishaps, after the fact you get a very sincere acceptance of the kind of restriction we're talking about which some of the rest of us perhaps have not had to face in quite the same way.

Ms Murdock: That's true. But I have a couple of questions on your presentation, and I guess one that is not addressed. Zero blood alcohol concentration for the accompanying driver: Do you agree with that concept?

Mr George Cooke: Absolutely.

Ms Murdock: And this hasn't been mentioned at all, but two only in the front seat? Only two people in the front seat at all times? Right now it's based on --

Mr George Cooke: The number of seatbelts. Our own position, again, is consistent with that of the IBC, but I believe the thought that has gone into it is that it's intended to try to reduce the distraction that otherwise would be available to the new driver until such time as there's been an opportunity to become fully competent in dealing not only with the actual driving skills, but also with the judgements that are necessary in using those skills. So it's for that kind of logic that we've come forward with the position we have.

Ms Murdock: Lastly, with the 25% reduction in death and injury in New Zealand, how long do you think it would take in Ontario, presuming the same thing were to occur, for that to be reflected in the premiums that would be paid by first-time drivers?

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Mr George Cooke: I can speak only for our own company, but from our company's point of view, should graduated licensing proceed -- and we surely hope that it will -- we will immediately track the cost reduction, and to the extent that our costs are reduced, the premiums will be reduced in a corresponding way to reflect the savings. We simply don't know what time period that would be, but it would be as immediate as possible for the reasons in the marketplace. If we can find a way to sell a product earning a reasonable return but yet at a much lower price than the competitor because we've been smart enough to track our costs properly, I tell you, there's every incentive to do it.

Mr Cooper: During the IBC presentation, there was one thing that says, "In general terms, 37% of fatalities involving drivers under 21 years of age occurred on high-speed roads." Is there a large difference between experienced drivers and drivers under 21 in fatalities on high-speed roads?

Mr George Cooke: I can't give you the specific numbers, but I'm instructed by my technical advisers that the answer is yes.

Mr Cooper: There is a large variance?

Mr George Cooke: Yes.

Mr Cooper: The reason I raise this issue is because we've had a number of fatalities in the Kitchener-Waterloo area on the expressway, and if there was no variable difference, what I was wondering was whether it was the highways that are the problem or the training that's the problem, or inexperience.

Mr George Cooke: I don't have the technical expertise personally to answer, but what I'm instructed is that it's at least in large measure an experience-related problem. That's not to say that road design is not important, and there might be something peculiar with that stretch of highway. I know, for example, at one point there was a huge accident incidence in a strip of highway from the 401 up to Peterborough, which has subsequently been corrected. So road design might be part of it, but it's certainly not the sole part.

Mr Cooper: All right. I was just wondering if there was justification for the restriction on the 400 series and certain expressways.

Mr George Cooke: I'm so instructed.

Mr Conway: Mr Cooke, as always, a very interesting performance.

Mr George Cooke: It's nice to see you again too.

Mr Conway: No, listen. The staff from the department were very helpful over the noonhour, because one of the things -- this is like, you know, you can't be opposed to this. I mean, poor old Murdoch and I are here -- that is, Murdoch from Grey -- trying to, I think, reflect a bit of what we're hearing from the people we will get to face. All of the virtuous hordes who come here and tell us what a terrible thing we didn't do this in 1927 won't be at the meetings that Murdoch and I and the rest of us are going to get to go to. In a day and age where people are fed up with what they see as just ridiculous regulation, even if it's only a minor part of a big goodness, it's not much fun standing there naked in the wind trying to explain the inexplicable, defend the indefensible.

Mr George Cooke: No, but it's an amazing thought to behold, actually.

Mr Conway: Yes, it's true. Almost as amazing as it is for me to contemplate what it was really like in Haileybury whenever it was you were in high school, because you may in fact be as virtuous as your rhetoric, but I might just want to check back. I know what I was like, and I was a long way from being this good.

The one example -- and the departmental officials may have solved the problem for me. You see, when you look at this -- I am quite prepared to be pretty tough, probably tougher than some people in some areas involving alcohol and all the rest of it. But I do have to be realistic. I don't want to do something that's going to be clearly unenforceable. I've said a number of times I'd like to get some of the highway patrol people in here and some of the kids in here to see just how their behaviour might in fact be modified. We all have got a pretty clear idea of what it's going to be.

But the one example that I was using was -- and I'll come back to it, because Ms Murdock talked about it. I'm thinking about a situation where it's sort of 5 o'clock on a Monday afternoon in December and there's an after-school basketball practice. We're not talking about a bunch of kids wanting to get liquored up, pile into a car, take off to Timiskaming and do terrible things. Those are a real part of the stats and we want that rectified to the greatest extent possible. But I'm talking about a daily occurrence in some of these rural high schools I have: It's 5 o'clock on a December afternoon and there's no more late bus, or if there is, it left well before the basketball practice.

The question I had is, the way it works now, there will be somebody there who will have a full licence, and there are more cars out there now than there were when you and I were young. So the issue and the concern I had was around, how do those kids get home?

The officials indicated to me over lunch -- and there may not be nearly the problem I thought -- that what we've got here is the situation where once you're through and have your level 2, then presumably -- which one is it when you pass through the second stage? Is that --

Mr Daigeler: Level 2, you're saying.

Mr Conway: Yes. I'm just trying to think of those kids. You know exactly the group I'm talking about. That's a daily occurrence. How do those people carry on their lives? I assume, then, according to what I was reminded of at lunch, that under the current proposal, if I'm 17 and in grade 11 or 12, if there's still such a thing, and I have a level 2 and I've got a car, I'm fully licensed, I can drive those kids home. So that's not a problem.

Mr George Cooke: Not for the government's proposal, but I think it would be for the proposal we're putting forward.

Mr Conway: That's what I wanted. So just explain, then, your proposal, what you would recommend.

Mr George Cooke: Let me try to answer what I think you're asking. You've got to realize three things. The facts, to the extent that they are there in terms of the reduction of accidents and the opportunity to save lives, are real facts. Those savings are achieved. They're not necessarily achieved only from large expressways and roads in southern Ontario; they're achieved province-wide.

Mr Conway: I accept that.

Mr George Cooke: So I think that's something the mother in Renfrew that you might be speaking to would have to come to grips with.

I think the second point is that you can't drive public policy to deal with the few and impose it on the many. I think you have to look at it the other way around. You try your best to accommodate all interests, but you can't succeed.

The third answer I'm going to give is that --

Mr Conway: Let me just say to you, though, respectfully, that if I were here and I were the member for North York, I tell you, I'd embrace that enthusiastically. But I'm one of the few people here now who represent rural Ontario. I admit to you, we are in a minority.

Mr George Cooke: When I was living in Haileybury in 1970, a close friend of mine wanted to play basketball and the school bus left early. He lived 35 miles off in the country and actually had no particular way to come back and forth. His dad was a shift worker and couldn't drive him. He stayed over with us on Thursday nights and went to his basketball practice. The community found a solution to it, and there's ample creativity in those northern communities to do that. I think those kinds of answers will be quite self-evident in those communities if people understand that the reason the legislation is being put forward is for the greater public good, to save lives and reduce injury.

If people think it's just more government intervention and intrusion into a part of their life that they otherwise wish they would stay out of, they won't be quite so accepting. So I think it's very important for us to not get mired in the detail and to talk at a much higher level about these sorts of things, because that's what I would do if I found myself in your circumstance.

Mr Daigeler: Just a very quick question: You mention in there that you've been meeting with the Toronto Star and Globe and Mail editorial boards to discuss this. What were their views? If you can remember, what was the gist of the conversation there?

Mr George Cooke: I think the kinds of concerns they articulated were very similar to the concerns that have been put forward before this committee, but having heard them, I can only say the subsequent editorials -- this would be perhaps some seven to eight months ago -- that followed our meetings would be the way of capturing their views. I think the essence was that graduated licensing made some sense and it would provide benefits overall.

Perhaps the one item that they raised that we haven't covered yet has to do with enforcement, and they were quite concerned about how this thing might be enforced. That of course provides some difficult challenges, as we all know, but I don't think they're insurmountable either.

Mr Conway: Raise taxes and hire more cops.

The Chair: I thank the Dominion of Canada General Insurance Co and you, Mr Cooke, for appearing today. Your views are important to the committee and they have played a valuable role in the process. We trust that you'll stay in touch with the committee, through the clerk or any member of the committee or any MPP, as we go through the process of graduated licensing.

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DOUGLAS ANNETT

The Chair: Next is Petro-Canada Skid Control School. Good afternoon and welcome, sir.

Mr Douglas Annett: I'd like to thank the committee for inviting me and allowing me to speak to this session. My name is Douglas Annett. I'm the manager of the Petro-Canada Skid Control School. I'm not here representing the school as such and I'm not representing driver education as such, but by virtue of the fact that I'm involved in post-licensed driver training, I get to see the people who have come through the driver training procedures and see them as they enter the workforce. Many of our clientele are professional drivers, so I get to see the results of the driver training and licensing process six or eight years down the line.

One of the few things I remember from Professor John Crispo's class, one of the few courses I survived at the University of Toronto, an industrial relations class, was his constant reference to, "When is a duck not a duck?" I've led off with that question, "When is a duck not a duck?" If it looks like a duck, waddles like a duck, quacks like a duck, it's a duck.

Let me just give you an illustration: Here we have an example, albeit maybe a weak one, of a duck. It's going to waddle like a duck, it sounds like a duck, it looks like a duck, vaguely. However, when we look at the Ontario graduated licensing duck, it looks something like this: It's going to have a tough time waddling like a duck, it sure doesn't sound like a duck and I don't think it looks a whole lot like a duck either. Let's call a duck a duck, and this isn't a duck. When we call this a graduated licensing system, we have to be careful, because what is going on in a graduated licensing system does not seem to be able to be accomplished by this system, in my point of view.

I'll go toe to toe with anybody who thinks that graduated licensing is not a good idea or a good concept, because I believe it is a good concept and a good idea and will work effectively. We've seen in other jurisdictions that it has proven to be successful with certain target groups. In Ontario, we have chosen to work with all new drivers, because it's, I believe, represented in data that all new drivers are overrepresented in crash statistics. So we are highlighting and focusing on the new driver who is 16 years old or 17 years old, but the Ontario system has chosen to work with drivers of all ages, because we're interested in not discriminating, I suppose.

That's kind of a dangerous word, but there are discriminations all through the licensing processes. I'm using "discrimination" in the proper sense of the word, which segregates or separates people for a reason, not the bigoted or prejudicial or arbitrary use of that term as it is often used in common parlance. Discriminating is in fact something that is done all the time. We don't allow 15-year-olds to drive. When you're 80, not 77, you have to do a driver's test. We make arbitrary judgements. I think if you can back up what you are presenting in a graduated licensing system with data, not just good ideas but with data, then you can justifiably discriminate. So let's not think that "discrimination" is a dirty word.

The objective of this discrimination, as I see it, is that learning drivers require years of experience, they are overrepresented in crash statistics and it is extremely difficult to discriminate between the individuals who will have crashes and the ones who will not. Because of that, we have to go to a level of discrimination which includes that grand group of people who we figure are overrepresented in the crash statistics.

Studies seem to indicate that experience-related factors and age-related factors are the reasons for new drivers being overrepresented. The role of graduated licensing is actually twofold; that is, it is intended to provide protection, as I see it -- my words, not the Ministry of Transportation's words -- in reference to age-related factors. Let's protect the people who, because of age-related factors, put themselves at greater risk.

We also have to deal with experience factors. Because of the long learning process for the driving task, by protecting them we are allowing experience to occur, facilitating learning.

The way I see it set up, this system isn't going to deliver on that promise. Graduated licensing is a wonderful concept. There is a certain bandwagon effect, though, where, "We've got to have a graduated licence system because Nova Scotia is thinking about it and BC is thinking about it." However, I think if you look at the BC and Nova Scotia proposals, you'll find there's a lot more meat in those proposals than in the graduated licence system proposed for Ontario. We're wrapping simple changes with all this fancy, glittery packaging and calling it graduated licensing to sell some ideas that may or may not come up with the effects we really want them to.

Good ideas come and go. We had a good idea about 15 years ago for probationary licensing and now it's on the scrap heap. It's going to go when graduated licensing comes in. The fear I have is that 15 years from now we're going to look back on this proposal for graduated licensing and say: "Gee, it was a good idea that didn't work. How come?" It'll be on the scrap heap too, while other jurisdictions come along with systems that seem to have more effect and that will be kept.

Let me put the overhead up which is taken from the Ministry of Transportation brochure; I trust that you have this information somewhere. This is the list of restrictions that will be placed on new drivers at level 1. These are the people who will be supervised. They will have a supervising driver with them. This is comparable to the level of the 365 presently. Those are the restrictions that will be placed upon them according to this system. This is the list of the restrictions that we've placed upon them after they've passed their first test, this big long list here, okay? We're straight on that? There's this list for the people who are already supervised, who already have a driver with them. Here are the people when they're on their own. This is the group who are at risk, because they're unsupervised, they're unprotected, and very little facilitation is going on for them. In my mind, it seems to me that we need to extend the list of restrictions for the people who are unsupervised, not for the people who are supervised.

There's one little sneaky thing here that's a real good idea -- this isn't really a big issue, it seems, for a lot of people -- that the accompanying driver or supervising driver, as I call him, has to have four years' experience under this system. This is a great idea, but it doesn't require all the hoopla of graduated licensing to accomplish. It's a simple little change; make it four years. You don't need all the window dressing of a graduated system to accomplish that.

"Maintain a zero blood alcohol level" is a great idea. I don't think anybody's going to argue with that one. That's a check mark. We accept that one. That is certainly a protection issue, isn't it? It is also a facilitating issue, I suppose, if you consider that we want to teach people how to drink and drive, but it's largely a protection issue.

The accompaniment by a four-year driver is certainly a protection issue, isn't it? Some of the driving instructors in the crowd may argue with me on this, but not too many kids goof around when the instructor is in the car. We're hoping that the parents will not allow that to happen either. It is also a facilitating function, because that's the circumstance where most driver training occurs.

"Refrain from driving on 400 series highways and certain designated multilane urban expressways." This one probably is going to kick up a lot of dust. From my point of view on this, I'm going to have to dig out some statistics. Some person once -- I don't know who it was; enlighten me as to who actually this person was who said this, but somebody said, "There's lies, damned lies and statistics." Unfortunately, I'm going to have to refer to some of them.

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This is from the Ministry of Transportation trends overview. What we have is trends in accidents. What we find is that there are that many crashes on freeways and highways and that there are this many fatalities on freeways, highways, for those respective years. If you calculate that all out, which I have done for you, you come up with rates which are something in the order, for freeways, of 7.7 fatalities per 1,000 kilometres driven -- sorry, per 1 million kilometres. Million? Sorry, I'll have to check the book to get the exact number on that. The point is that for freeways there's a much lower fatality-per-crash rate than there is for normal highways or other King's highways, as they're called here, which is something in the range of 16 per -- sorry, I don't have that number straight; I can check it.

The issue of course, as I see it, is that the statistics don't bear out restricting people from freeways. Are the majority of the fatalities on freeways young people who are supervised or are they people who are unsupervised? Now, where is the protection issue for people here? I'm really not sure, because I don't see that they make up a gross threat on our highways.

Another issue regarding this is fatalities by age. If we're working with fatalities by age, we find that 16-year-olds, generally speaking, the ones who are the protected group, who are either on a 365 licence or the level 1, as it will be called, don't show up in the fatalities column with the frequency that older people do. Obviously, when you're dealing with the 18-, 19- and 20-year-olds, you're going to be looking at alcohol involvement to a greater degree than with younger teenagers. I'm not sure that we have the ability to sort out these kinds of numbers for older new drivers. They may be available, but I'm not really able to put my hands on those. Even if they are available, it's probably quite a process to dig them out. But you see that the protection stages have to start coming in at the older ages; not level 1, level 2. Level 1s are protected like crazy. Level 2 is where we need the protection.

Let me put this overhead back up because that's the list that we're going through here.

"Refrain from driving between the hours of midnight and 5 am." That's another one of the ideas that's being beaten around by this. From the gist of what I heard earlier, I'm not sure -- I came in late on that discussion earlier, but the question here, as I see it, is, what is the threat, darkness or the kind of yahooism that goes on in driving with new drivers? If it's yahooism that we're trying to deal with, this seems to be the time when mobile yahooism is the greatest threat. If you decide that darkness is the threat, then you're going to have to come up with a much more complicated analysis for that question.

British Columbia seems to feel, in its proposals, that darkness in a threat. In the proposals that are being beaten around in BC, they're talking about the same usage of new drivers of their vehicles on the roads as they would for headlights -- one hour before and after dusk and dawn and all that -- whereas it seems that the Ontario proposal is to cut down on yahooism. That's fine with me.

Again, it becomes extremely muddy and complicated because of the problems of getting home, as we heard earlier, from basketball when you live in a northern community. Again, we'd have to look at the individual statistics of people who are injured who would come under this category and whether 3:30 is such a high time for fatalities among teenagers.

It is true that some of the highest hours for fatalities to occur in Ontario are in the early evening, again largely because, I suppose, of changing light conditions and the very crowded roads that we're dealing with, somewhere between 4 and 8 pm. Again, I would question whether those are issues for the beginning driver or if those are issues of general driving practice.

I'm content to live with this, except at level 1, while the person is supervised anyway, why does supervision become difficult after midnight? We've already protected them by putting the driver who's supervising at four years of experience. So we're separating the group of people who would be driving with one day of level 1 experience being supervised by a person with one day of level 2 experience. We're working through that with this proposal here.

The vehicle sign: I'm not going to get into that. As I see it, that's not a really big issue or a big point. I'm not going to argue pro or con on that one.

"Limit the number of passengers they carry to the number of seatbelts in the vehicle": I think it goes without saying that that should be a regulation for any driver of any age. Why do we have to stick it in here and try to bolster up our sale of graduated licensing? All of a sudden when you get older it's okay to carry people in the back of your pickup truck? Is that what you're trying to restrict? Then restrict that; don't try to sell us a package of goods that has all this other stuff in it.

"Drive class G vehicles only": Who's going to argue with that? I don't think that's a really big issue. Self-selection, the people who need to drive heavier vehicles. If anybody wants to argue with that, I have no issue. But the real important issues of protection and facilitation for new drivers I think are not addressed in this proposal.

There's another sneaky thing that gets kind of slid in here, it doesn't even get a bullet point, in this final line. They are restricted to a period of eight months if successfully completing an approved driver education course, or 12 months if not. That is a significant difference, because what you're going to be doing is bolstering the facilitating side of level 1. That is a significant change. That can happen without wrapping it up in graduated licensing talk. It's a simple regulation to change.

Other provinces have regulations in regard to this; we do not. I think that alone will be a significant step in the right direction at minimal cost. When I say "cost," I'm thinking about the entire implementation of a graduated licence system, with all the objection and all the committees and all the argument over it, and that simple thing there will allow the greatest merit of everything above that page. But it doesn't even get its own bullet point. They kind of slipped that one in on us.

To deal with driver education, the other issue that stands out is that now driver trainers will not be able to teach people on freeways. How are they supposed to drive on freeways? All of a sudden they pass their licence test on a city street and, bam, now with no experience, which they couldn't even possibly get under level 1, they're expected to be able to drive on freeways. We've got to change this so that if you're going to institute this, at least a person with a supervising driver should be trained on freeways, unless you want to make a second driver education requirement for level 2 and institute that in the level 2 test.

The level 2 test is another thing that has been snuck in here. It doesn't get a bullet point. In very tiny print on another page it says that a driver will be eligible for the second test. This, in itself, will be a breakthrough because it has never been accomplished, as far as I know, in any other jurisdiction that they have a level 2 test, comparable to level 2 in our language.

The level 2 test also, as the thought is going, will be a psychometrically sound test, valid and reliable, research-based and tested, which is certainly something that's never been done in Ontario and, as far as we know, in North America. This will be an important part of keeping people safe on our roads.

A few things from the system will help facilitate and protect young drivers, new drivers, and they can be accomplished very simply, but sell us a package of goods that's actually going to protect people after they pass that first test until they can go to the level 2 test.

I'm not trying to at all denigrate the work that the people from the Ministry of Transportation or the safety and policy branch have come out with, because I think that they, more than anyone, would love to see a proposal like this go through with lots of teeth. However, it seems that we have to make some decisions about what we're really going to do about people here. Are we going to worry about discrimination, or are we going to discriminate in the proper sense of the word?

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Mr Dadamo: Mr Annett, thank you. You were talking about the results of driver training and experience coming into effect six or eight years after the fact, in offering advanced driver training.

Mr Annett: Well, maybe could I --

Mr Dadamo: Maybe clarify.

Mr Annett: I generally get to work with people who are professionals or drivers who are sent by their companies. Some 70% of our business is corporate work, so I get to see what people are like after they are experienced drivers. The six to eight years is a good time frame -- research talks about this as a time frame -- for learning how to drive, when stabilization begins to occur in crash rates. There's also maturity factors that are coming into place.

I mentioned it also significantly because that's when many people who are finished with university education, getting into the workforce, come through my doors.

Mr Dadamo: So when's the appropriate time to take your skid schooling?

Mr Annett: Is this a plug for skid school? Great. I love it. It's valid for any age, because driver education is an ongoing process; that is, the only question in dealing with a new driver is whether he has enough experience to believe that emergencies are really going to happen to him.

If I can dig it out here, this is one that's worth quoting: Provisional Licensing Programs for Young Drivers, topical papers by licensing experts including an annotated biography from the US Department of National Transportation, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Boy, that's a mouthful.

This is a comment by James McKnight, president, National Public Services Research Institute, Landover, Maryland. This is prepared for a provisional license workshop in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, October 1986, so it's got a few grey hairs on it. But I think it's still valid, some of the comments.

"There is one element of education which I would like to see evaluated. We cannot, because no one has ever employed it. That is the idea of introducing additional driver education after a license is given. If any of you have observed in-car driver education instruction, you realize students have great difficulty just keeping the car on the road. They cannot attention-share between controlling the car and absorbing the safety information instructors are trying to give them. You cannot attention-share between tasks until one of them is reduced to a routine."

Mr Dadamo: I have about 30 seconds, and I want to clear something up. Half-jokingly you were saying that we should do it because Nova Scotia or British Columbia or whoever else was thinking about graduated licensing. But I know you're aware that New Zealand, Australia and Maryland have graduated licensing and statistically the numbers are down for fatalities. So that should be put on the record. I know you know that.

Mr Annett: Oh, yes.

Mr Dadamo: Okay?

Mr Annett: Like I say, I'll go toe-to-toe with people who think that graduated licensing is a bad idea. It's a great idea.

Mr Dadamo: I don't want you to give the impression that we're joking about this and we're not serious about this, and that we're only doing it because two other jurisdictions are thinking about it.

Mr Annett: Yes. I think that we have to be careful of the bandwagon effect though, that we're going to jump on this bandwagon and we're not really sure what the load is.

Mr Steven Offer (Mississauga North): Thank you for your presentation. Under the proposal in level 1, a person can basically get out of level 1 at eight months if he takes a driver ed course. The question I have for you is, is that a sufficient incentive to get somebody into that? Secondly, should it be? Thirdly, isn't the reality of this, with the penalties, that somebody's just going to go for his level 1 and potentially stay off the road and not get the experience that everyone says is so necessary? In fact, isn't the reality that the licence age has been increased from 16 years to 16 years and 8 months or 17 years?

Mr Annett: Let me start with the last question first, and make sure I cover all of them.

Whether someone will stay off the road or not on purpose, I think you'd find very few people who would use that as a motivation, personally. I think people get driver's licences for a lot of reasons and they will find a need for using that licence if they've chosen to go to the trouble of getting it. Sure, people who are in high-risk categories may simply not drive, more because the insurance rates are very high for a new driver and for that reason may choose to stay off the road, not purchasing a car, not having to pay high insurance rates for their particular age group. That in itself may be a motivation to not purchase a car. I'm not sure what the motivation might be to not get experience if you're allowed to do so.

Let me go back to the first of your questions: Do I think it's long enough for a person to be a competent driver? Of course not. If it's of suitable training time, which is saleable for the vast majority of people, I think it's reasonable. However, because the restrictions are only placed at that first level, I think you're going to get very little benefit from it. The restrictions, as I see it, need to come in at the second level.

As far as the motivation is concerned, my gut feeling is that you may need a larger reduction in time to make it a stronger motivation for people to take driver education. I'm not sure that I'm qualified to comment on people's motivation for that. My suspicion is that it should be a greater reduction or, overall, make the time frames a little bit different. Perhaps make level 1 eight months and halve it to four months if you do the driver education program. But whatever you end up with, whether it's three, six, eight, 10 months or 12 months, it's sure a step in the right direction from where we're at now, where you have zero requirement for delay after that minute you turn 16 before you can go for a driver's test.

Mr Turnbull: Let us say we went along with your idea of eight months -- I'm not sure I'm happy with that suggestion -- and a four-month period if you have driver education. Are you saying that in level 2 you want supervised accompaniment at all times or just with the new experience, ie, 400 series highways and night driving?

Mr Annett: What you end up doing is layering this, so it's not a two-level system but a three- or four-level system, if you choose to do that. What I'm concerned about is that for the level 2 drivers, when we look at the situations where they tend to kill themselves, most often is high-speed, late at night in groups. If they can be restricted to limited passengers in the vehicle, we might only kill one or two instead of six or seven or eight.

Also, I think it's extremely difficult to justify limiting freeway experience from the level 1. Okay, they're anecdotal, but if you look at the number of crashes in the last couple of years that have made all the papers -- six here, seven there, five here; the most recent one six people and a train -- those seem to be the situations where groups of kids are killing themselves, not on freeways.

I would suggest that if you're going to have any freeway restrictions, then it doesn't make any sense to leave them in level 1. Make it in level 2. If you think freeway restriction is valid, throw it in level 2 too. If you think the number of people in a vehicle is significant, then that has to apply to all levels as well. That, in level 2, seems to be the place where the greatest danger to teenagers is.

Mr Turnbull: Would you have accompaniment at level 2 in all situations or only in those new situations that they're allowed to go into? Having said that, you make a very good point, the fact that we don't allow people to go on a 400 series highway until they no longer need accompaniment with them.

Mr Annett: To answer that, I would put the accompaniment in level 1 and allow 400 series driving roads, and then if you wish to take it off in level 2, I would say at least they've had an opportunity to learn something about 400 level driving. I don't see that it's a critical factor in the fatalities that teenagers and young drivers and new drivers are involved in at level 2.

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Mr Turnbull: If you allow that, would you allow night driving in level 1 with accompaniment?

Mr Annett: Certainly. With accompaniment, I don't see a problem with driving anywhere, any time.

Mr Turnbull: If you do that, what you would do exactly in level 2? Would you have mandatory skid testing? I know you say perhaps a three-level process, but what would be in level 2 and potentially level 3?

Mr Annett: The restriction on level 2 then would become that -- I'll get my list out here. The restrictions then would be that -- it goes part and parcel with the 400. If it's valid to restrict it for level 1, keep the restriction for level 2 or ashcan it for both, one or the other. But this arrangement is not acceptable as is. It doesn't make any sense.

As far as curfews are concerned, which is the other big issue as I see it, then the curfew is necessary for level 2, when they are able to drive without accompanying drivers, supervising drivers. That becomes a necessary factor. It's one or the other: supervision or curfew. I think the curfew is the way to go, rather than supervision.

The Chair: Mr Annett, thank you for taking the opportunity to be here this afternoon and present your views. Your views are important to the committee and they have played a valuable role in the process. We trust you will stay in touch with the committee as we continue through the process of graduated licensing.

JOSEPH KLAMER

The Chair: Next is Joseph Klamer. Good afternoon and welcome.

Mr Joseph Klamer: My name is Joseph Klamer. I'm a private citizen of Toronto and Canada. I was born here and I'm here today to answer a few questions, Mr Conway, about what you asked about getting some policemen in here and some kids.

Mr Conway: Regular folks.

Mr Klamer: Regular folks. I'm just a regular folk. Mr Offer, as to your question -- I'd like to answer this right away -- about whether somebody who got their licence were to stop driving for a year until they were at level 2: If I had a child who turned 16 today and this proposal by the Insurance Bureau of Canada was in effect, I would take their licence away and I'd say, "It's ridiculous; don't even think about it." The reason for that will become evident as I tell my story. I'll start at the beginning.

When I was born, my father was making $35 a week and we lived in a two-bedroom apartment and he was starting his own business. By the time I was 16 years old, he was extremely successful and, being that successful, he was allowed to acquire some of the things that go with success. When I got my licence, my family car was a Mercedes-Benz at 16 years old.

Mr Conway: Wow.

Mr Klamer: Yes, pretty nice; very nice, I have to admit. There aren't a lot of people who get to drive something like that at 16 years old.

Mr Conway: Your name isn't Horatio, is it?

Mr Klamer: Unfortunately not. Even though this car was wonderful to drive and I truly enjoyed driving it and had a lot of fun with it, it gave me problems that I found out later other children also had at that age. But for me specifically, it made my life hell, not because I was in accidents and not because I was a reckless driver. I was never convicted of any drunken driving charges. The most charges I ever got were the usual speeding tickets and I'd like to explain those now.

The first speeding ticket I ever got was driving in front of my father's office building, because he wanted me to put gas in the car for him. I turned the corner and that was the first ticket I got. I didn't hear the end of it for at least six months from all the employees, because there were big picture windows there and everybody saw me get a ticket. I'll never live that down, ever.

The second speeding ticket I got, which has got to be the longest-running speed trap in the city, was at Bayview between Post Road and Lawrence. It's been there since I've been driving and it's always there at midnight or 1 o'clock in the morning. When you drive up the street, I think at that time the speed limit there was 30 miles an hour and I was probably going 40 or something; I don't remember exactly. As I was driving down the road, this policeman -- although I didn't know this at the time. I just saw a gentleman standing beside a car, waving a flashlight. I stopped at the light at Post Road and the next thing I knew, there was a policeman pointing at me, flashing his badge. He was in an unmarked car wearing a uniform.

I pulled over. He got out of his car and he started yelling and screaming at me at the top of his lungs: "Why didn't you stop? Why didn't you do this?" I was shaking I was so scared. I was scared to death when this happened. I told him, "I thought you were just some guy fixing his car with his flashlight." He was in an unmarked car, he was under a streetlight that had gone out and I had no idea it was a police officer. From that moment on, I was absolutely terrified of the police.

In this graduated driving licence program -- I've got your brochures and all and your amendments to the regulations -- I see nothing here that states what are the requirements of the police if they should stop a child or a new driver under this program. How are they to conduct themselves? How are they to react? Because from that moment on, from that speeding ticket on, I was terrified of police. Whenever I was driving and I saw a police car go by, I was so worried about him pulling me over and what would happen to me, that at times I wasn't concentrating on the road the way I should have been.

The other problem with driving the car that I had was that in those days, that was 22 years ago, it was a time of social unrest, the hippies, when everybody had long hair. I still have a bit of it but not as much as I used to. I would get pulled over because here was a 16-year-old driving a Mercedes-Benz. I would be up late at night because at that time I was also going to school in the States and my vacation times did not quite jibe with everybody else's, so I always had a few days at the beginning or the end also when other kids were in school and I wasn't because I hadn't gone back to school yet. I was in high school. The policeman would pull me over and he would say, "You were speeding." The first few times this happened, I believed policemen. I was a very naïve 16-year-old. I thought when a policeman said you were speeding, you were speeding. They don't lie. They don't misrepresent themselves. If they said that, that's the way it is.

After getting a lot of these speeding tickets, I started to wonder because there were a few times when I could have sworn there was no way I was speeding. There just wasn't any way that I was speeding.

One time in particular, late at night at about 1 o'clock, 2 o'clock in the morning, as I was driving around just looking for somewhere to go, I was by myself in the car and I was going up Mount Pleasant just before Charles Street, where you go up that bridge and you make that sort of right turn there. A policeman went by me in the opposite direction. I was the only other car on the road. There was nobody else around. There wasn't even anybody behind him and I said to myself, "I bet $100 he turns around and stops me." I had my eye on the speedometer so much that I almost ran into the bridge abutment. Sure enough, 30 seconds later, the lights are on, he pulls me over. He said: "I saw you going by. I figured you were speeding. I came up and you were." There was absolutely no way in the world that I was speeding, absolutely none.

He gave me a ticket. I went to court. I tried to fight it, but I went by myself and I didn't know really what I was doing. That doesn't happen any more, believe me. I take every ticket I get now to court because of these things that happened to me as I was a child.

From that point on, I was extremely careful about how I drove, just because I would be liable to be pulled over. I've waited 22 years and I thought I'd wait a lifetime not being able to tell somebody that story. I went to the insurance broker who handled my insurance because my insurance was cut off for getting so many speeding tickets. I spoke to my father who didn't believe me. As a matter of fact, everyone I told -- and at that time if you got nine points, I think, or more, you had to go and see somebody at that licensing board or whatever.

The first time I went I tried to explain this to them. The guy just looked at me, "Yeah, yeah, everybody doesn't speed, I know." The second time I went I just went: "Yes, sir, I won't do it again, sir. It'll never happen again, sir. I'm very sorry, sir." I left and I thought to myself, "What a jerk," because nobody believed me. Absolutely nobody believed that I was getting these tickets because of the car I was driving, because I was just a kid or because the police just needed an excuse to pull me over. No one believed me.

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I waited a long time to tell somebody that, and the traumatic effect that it had on me is still with me to this day. I look at the police with distrust and I look at the police with apprehension. Sometimes, when I've been pulled over in the last few years, I know how to conduct myself, I know exactly what to say and how to address a policeman. But they still scare me to some extent sometimes, because of the attitude I felt, and I'm 38 years old.

When I was pulled over at certain times, they would ask me, "Do you work?" What did that have to do with whether I was speeding or not? "Do you have a job? It must be nice having rich parents." In the neighbourhood I lived in, a lot of kids were well-off, some maybe not as well off as my parents were and we all would sit around and tell about how we were treated by the police. I see nothing in this book here that gives anybody such as myself any recourse if they feel injustice has been committed against them or anything at all.

With that out of the way, before 15 minutes is up, I'd like to go through this little booklet here and tell you what I think of these proposals and why I think they're so wrong.

I think a graduated system is probably a good idea, considering what I've seen just out on the roads in the last little while. When I phoned the secretary who made this appointment for me, I started keeping a list of all the accidents -- I shouldn't say accidents; I haven't been in any -- but the near misses that I've had just in the last two weeks.

The one that most comes to mind is somebody opened a car door, which made a red Sable pull into my lane, which made me go into the opposing traffic and go around him. Had I not been driving the sports car I was driving, I would have been in a head-on collision or I would have hit the red Sable. I had that much time, less than an eye blink, to think about this and, because of my experience as a driver for 22 years, I was able to avoid this accident. This had nothing to do with somebody driving. It was a guy who was getting out of his car who didn't look.

Aside from that, I feel this is mostly aimed, not just towards new drivers, but specifically aimed at young drivers, 16-year-old drivers. This is the impression I've got. Out of all the accidents I've been in, out of all the near misses that I have been in, in the 22 years I've been driving, 95% of them were committed by adults, not kids. When I was a kid, 16, 17, 18 years old, I very rarely heard of a child who was in an accident, a friend of mine at school or somebody else's school, and if they were in one, it was usually committed by someone who had years and years of experience.

When they passed the seatbelt law, I thought to myself, "Great, but why doesn't somebody pass a law saying the car manufacturers have to build safer cars?" There was never any talk of that. Years ago, I heard someone state -- I don't know who it was -- that 1% of the cost of manufacturing a car is towards the safety of a car, how safe it is on the road. That's terrible. That's awful. I think that's just ridiculous.

Anyway, let's start with this here. It says, "Transportation determined the most successful...are those that allow new drivers to gain experience in a low-risk learning environment." Whoever wrote this doesn't drive on the roads very much because there's no such thing as a low-risk learning environment when you're out on the road.

"Maintain a zero blood alcohol level." That's a very good idea. Obviously, accidents are caused more often by drinking and driving than anything else.

"Drive only when accompanied by a fully licensed driver" of four years: Wonderful. I can just see a 16-year-old with a 20-year-old in a car. I see a lot of experience here and I see a lot of people, a lot of kids, going, "Yes, sure; let's see how fast this baby can go, Chucky; step on the gas," coming out of the mouth of a 20-year-old. As the person before me stated in his little pamphlet there, there are more deaths caused by 20-year-olds than there were 16-year-olds and yet these are the people who are going to be giving advice to a 16-year-old on how to drive?

I remember some of the kids I went driving with when I was 20 years old and 18 or 19 and I was in their cars. These guys were maniacs. I didn't ever get in the car with them again, some of them. I did not want to drive with these people. I'm not saying that I didn't drive fast at times. This also bothers me, the fact that -- it just seems to me, what if you're not a 16-year-old? What if you're a 22-year-old or a 25-year-old? One of the best jobs for any immigrant to get in this country is a delivery job or a taxicab driver. How's somebody's going to operate a job like that if they have to have a licensed driver beside them?

"Refrain from driving on...highways." Like the person said before me, if you're going to teach someone how to drive, they should be taught how to drive on a highway. When I took the OML test that my father made me take because I got a 10% reduction in my insurance, no one ever took me out on the highway. What I've learned on the highway has been through years of experience. I spent five years living in Aspen, Colorado, driving through the Rocky Mountains with whiteouts. A whiteout is snow blowing so hard at your car that you can't see past the front of your car. I've come around corners on mountain roads in the middle of summer on dry roads and come face to face with a 600- to 800-pound deer. What do you do? Now, this isn't going to happen in the city of Toronto, hopefully, but what about up there in the rural areas? There's a lot of wildlife out there. Nobody ever taught me these things in the classes I took.

"Refrain from driving between the hours of midnight and 5 am" just seems to me to be completely ridiculous. I see a lot of problems coming up where a kid goes over to his girlfriend's house, they lose track of time and the next thing: "Oh, my God, it's 10 to 12. How do I get home?"

Two things, from growing up, remind me --

Interjection.

Mr Klamer: Yeah, you stay over.

Mr Klopp: That's better than you've run out of gas.

Mr Klamer: In that instance, I didn't show up one night when I was supposed to show up. I got home and my parents picked up the phone and phoned the police and said: "It's okay, he's here. We've found him." So my parents had called the police wondering what had happened to me.

I just don't understand what the difference is between 11 o'clock or 1 o'clock in the morning. This makes absolutely no sense to me at all. It reminds me of two things that happened to me. One was when I turned 18 years old. At that time, you were legally allowed to drink at that age. I'd been drinking in bars since I was 17. I had fake ID like all my friends did. I remember having my birthday and going, "Wow, now I can legally drink." I remember going out that night and sticking my ID in all the doormen's faces, saying, "Don't you want to check my ID?" whereas before I would avoid that situation. I felt no different from that time to another; from being 17 and then 18 there was no difference in my lifestyle, no difference in the way I conducted myself.

The other instance was when I went to university. All of a sudden I could come in and I could eat food and drink in the classes, and yet two months ago I was in high school, where if I did that I'd be in the principal's office, like that. So something like this, not between midnight and 5 am, makes no sense to me. All of a sudden a year later you're now allowed to drive late at night.

On the next one, "Display a vehicle sign," two things bother me about that. One is the fact that this will identify not so much a mature adult as a new driver, but I'm worried about a young child having that, a 16- or 17-year-old. There are a lot of people I remember when I was driving my car, other kids who would come up in their souped up sports cars or whatever and would harass you on the road. This just identifies you even more.

The other problem I have with that is, if you look at what's happening in Florida with rental cars, you see tourists being shot because people are able to spot rental cars. If you had a sign like this on a car, it would immediately identify someone as a child. I'm telling you, if I had a 16-year-old daughter, I don't want her standing out any more than her age already does.

The other thing this reminds me of is when you see people taking their driver's ed courses, you see those signs on top of the cars stating "New Driver." It's to give you a warning. You give them a little more latitude. You don't come up and ride their bumper. You don't honk your horn because they're driving slow or they're making a turn a lot slower than a normal driver would. At the same time, I see people when they see those signs do their damnedest to get the hell out of the way, in itself causing accidents. I see a sign like this creating, "Oh, God, a student driver; got to get out of there, driving too slow, lousy drivers," and zoom out of the way and then cause an accident doing that.

Limit of passengers to seatbelts: I think everybody should wear a seatbelt if they did any damn good. It bothers me that children are going to be sitting in the back of cars that only have lap belts not combined with shoulder harnesses. There are a lot of kids in this country and the United States who are paraplegics because the law said you wear a seatbelt and they put their seatbelts on and were rear-ended while at a stop or moving, and they were thrown so violently forward because they didn't have a shoulder harness that their backs were broken and they can no longer walk.

I also wonder how long it's going to be before the first car accident turns up where you have one of those nice little Chevettes or something, with four kids in the car and two lying down on the floor because there weren't any seatbelts and they were hiding from the police so they wouldn't get pulled over.

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These kinds of laws sound very good, but in reality they just don't work because kids are going to do things. I can't imagine walking out of a party with a 20-year-old and a 16-year-old and there are five of you and only four seatbelts in the car. Are you going to leave this kid there who's your best buddy? Are you going to try and make other arrangements and say, "Well, come in so and so's car," but so and so can't drive because he doesn't have someone who has four years experience to sit beside him? These things all sound fine on paper, but in reality they just don't work.

Then at the end of all this nice little booklet here, it says that this should result in a 10% reduction in accidents. Ten per cent? That's it? All this work for 10%? This is ridiculous. I don't see why there shouldn't be some kind of program set up so that it's 90% reduction, so that people just don't have accidents.

Unfortunately, the person from Petro-Canada didn't state something I heard someone else mention as a driver ed teacher. He said there's no such thing as car accidents, because accident is to elude something that's avoidable. If you're driving, all accidents are avoidable if you're a good driver, and the only way to become a good driver is to have proper instruction and proper education, and I don't see any of that here.

How many commercials are on TV saying: "Come to our Young Drivers of Canada. Don't let your parents teach you the bad habits they've picked up."? There's nothing in here about what kind of courses to take, how long these courses should be. When I took my course, it was six weeks long, two nights a week, and most of what I learned was on the road; it wasn't in that class. I'd like to see that changed. I'd like to see it where it's as intensive to get a driver's licence as it is to get a gun licence. You've got to go through so many regulations and so much education on the proper handling of a firearm before you're allowed a licence to get one, that it's next to impossible to get, which it should be.

At the same time, I'd like to see some courses where you have a great big parking lot and you're put in a car and it's simulated, what it's like to drive on ice, if it's the summertime by spraying oil or water on the road. You just sit in a car and say, "Now hit the brakes and see how it feels to spin a car around in a circle," and, "This is what it's like if you smash into something at 30 miles an hour or 40 kilometres." Most people don't conceive of that as being very dangerous, but when you hit something at 40 miles an hour and it brings you to an abrupt stop, the force and the impact just from the seatbelt can hurt you, from stopping you from smashing into anything.

I would like to see some kind of education course that addresses all this, that teaches you how to drive on ice, that teaches you how to drive in snow, that teaches you how to drive when it's raining outside, and not just how to drive, but what happens if you get into trouble. What happens if your car goes into a spin? How do you get out of it? What happens if somebody opens a car door when you're driving up the road? How do you avoid taking that guy's car door off or swerving into other traffic?

One of the things my instructor told me that I've never forgotten is, "When you're driving down a residential street, as you're driving down and there are cars parked along the street, look under the cars as you drive along, because you'll see two things. You'll either see animals or you'll see kids' feet whose heads aren't over the hoods of the car." I've never forgotten that.

Another instructor I heard once say, "If people would just look three or four cars down the road, just that one fact alone would reduce accidents by 30% because they could see something happening before it was in their face."

How many times have you been driving down a street and somebody decides to make a left-hand turn and you don't want to be stuck there for the next 10 minutes because it's rush hour and the traffic's coming, and you try and get over in the right lane. I see that all the time but I see it six cars back. I'm already in the right lane before I'm even there, before I've got to come to a complete stop and then try and pull out into oncoming right-hand traffic. I could go on for hours about this.

I just think it's important that the education level be raised exceedingly higher than it is right now. I think instruction has to be given in such a form that no matter what driving condition you're in, whether it's at night, during the day, whether you even have somebody sitting beside you, because if it's an emergency, what's this person going to do, say: "Whoa, look out. Oh my God, here we go"? Smash, there you go. I think before anybody is allowed to drive at all, when they get their learner's permit they should go to classes and courses that teach you evasive action and teach you what to do in an emergency and teach you not to panic.

How many times have I seen somebody run an intersection and instead of the person hitting the gas and getting the hell out of the way, they slam on the brakes because they're scared, "Oh my God, I'm going to get hit." Damn right, if you stay there. Get the hell out of the way. They hit the brakes because they panic. I would like to see something that teaches that form of driving, and that's all I have to say.

Mr Conway: Thank you, sir. You've certainly had a more interesting 38 years than I've had. One question I would ask has to do with your assessment of the driver education that you yourself took. You said you took a Young Drivers of Canada course?

Mr Klamer: It was the Ontario Motor League driver ed course.

Mr Conway: How would you assess the quality of that?

Mr Klamer: A lot of things I learned in that class I still hold today, like I said, looking under cars as you're driving by. But as far as teaching me what to do in an emergency is concerned, I was taught nothing. I was also taught how to conduct myself with police, which thank God I was because of the situations I ended up in, but other than that.

The other thing that just reminded me of is that I was watching Marketplace or W5 or one of those shows on TV. They were doing a segment on driver ed courses. They brought in a woman who was a driver ed teacher herself and had her play the part of a new learner. She was well in her 30s, and she got in this car and they followed in front with a camera and had her wired for sound. This guy had a cellular phone in his car. He was trying to rent an apartment and she said you could see it. Through half of this supposed driving instruction, this guy was sitting there on his phone trying to rent his apartment instead of teaching her how to drive.

The program also showed the fact that instructors basically have to do nothing to become instructors. I think you fill out a form, get a licence and there you are. They don't take any courses themselves on how to teach other people how to drive.

Mr Turnbull: Is it your position that you would require mandatory formal driver education?

Mr Klamer: Yes, I think that should definitely be included in it. I think there should be mandatory education from a licensed -- and I mean licensed by the government of Canada or Ontario or both, teaching these instructors on how to handle road conditions. I think everybody should go through the course.

Some of those times when I got my driver's licence and I got a ticket, the judge would say, "Either pay the fine or you take this course over here for the next two hours at night," and I would take this course. This was the question that I was asked every time I went to one of these courses: "When you're making a left-hand turn and you see the yellow arrows that point to the left-hand turn lane, but you also see sort of like a teardrop section with yellow lines going through it, are you or are you not allowed to drive over those yellow lines when you're making a left-hand turn as you approach the left-hand turn light?" This was the question I was asked. The answer is yes. The only people who put their hands up and said yes were the ones like myself who took the OML course, because that was one of the things the teacher told us. You are allowed to drive over those other lines.

When we answered that question, the instructor would say, "How many people have taken this course?" I'd put my hand up, and everyone else who didn't know the answer never put their hand up. They were never taught this, even though it is a rule of the road and it is required knowledge, and it should be. If you haven't driver education, all of this becomes irrelevant.

Mr Gary Wilson: Thanks, Mr Klamer, for a fascinating account of your driving experience. What kind of driver are you now, would you say?

Mr Klamer: Now?

Mr Gary Wilson: Yes.

Mr Klamer: I'm pretty much the same driver as I was when I was a teenager. I haven't really changed my driving habits, I've just become a better driver. I now know you don't get behind a taxicab ever, if you can help it, because these guys are maniacs.

Mr Gary Wilson: You think these things would be better done in a course? Is that the proper place?

Mr Klamer: I think that if my teacher had told me what taxicab drivers are capable of doing to get a fare, I wouldn't have smashed into the back of one when he stepped on the gas and pulled up and then hit his brakes because somebody went like this and I wasn't ready for it.

Then six months later I was standing at the corner of Avenue Road and Davenport and I saw the light turn green. The cab went through the intersection, a guy stuck out his arm, he slammed on his brakes and the person right behind him -- you don't expect a car to stop all of a sudden when there's no reason to, like making a left- or right-hand turn where you might expect that -- boom, right into him. The exact same thing that happened to me happened to this person.

I think if an instructor had taught me that, saying, "Look, cab drivers are the worst drivers in the world" -- I'd like to see these guys tested on an average of once a week. Not much chance of that happening, but these guys make illegal U-turns, they stop whenever they want, they pull over whenever they want without signalling. If he had told me: "Look, when you're driving behind a cab, take it easy. Give yourself room, because you don't know what this guy's going to do" -- but nobody told me that.

The Vice-Chair (Mr Mike Cooper): Mr Klamer, thank you for bringing a whole new perspective to this committee. You've raised a number of questions that will, hopefully, be answered from some of the future presenters.

Mr Klamer: I hope so. I'd like to see some of them. I hope you enjoyed yourselves. I wish you a lot of luck on the 25th.

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OFFICE OF THE CHIEF CORONER

The Chair: Next is the chief coroner of Ontario, Dr James Young. Good afternoon, Dr Young, and welcome. You have been allocated one half-hour for your presentation, and I know the committee would appreciate at least half of that, if it's possible, for dialogue and questions and answers. Proceed at your leisure.

Dr James G. Young: I have planned that way. I'm pleased to be invited this afternoon to make some comments. It's at some considerable personal peril. Being the father of four teenage boys, this is not a particularly popular topic at home sometimes, when they're being teenagers rather than being adults. We've had many of these debates, and many of the issues that have been raised, I'm sure, with the committee have been discussed on a personal basis at my home as well as in my role as the chief coroner.

I've put together a package I'd like to work through that just has some headings. I'd like to put some material to you, then. The office of the chief coroner has a role not only in investigating deaths and answering the questions, who died and how they died, where they died, when they died and the means of death -- those are important questions and necessary in death investigation -- but fortunately, I think, for the citizens of Ontario, the Legislature has decided that we also have a role in public safety.

The coroners in Ontario are mandated to investigate all of the circumstances surrounding a death and, if possible, to make recommendations to prevent similar deaths in future. We make these recommendations in a number of ways. On occasion, we will make recommendations immediately following an investigation. So if, for example, in a local area it's obvious that a stop sign or a change in the design of a particular intersection may prevent accidents, we may speak to a local council, to the Ministry of Transportation, whoever's involved, and see if we can bring about those changes.

Some issues are taken to inquest. An inquest, I'm sure all of you realize, is a formal public hearing. People are subpoenaed, evidence is given and recommendations arise that will lead to changes in road safety, road design etc.

The third way as well is that we participate very actively in research, and we attempt to use that research and those statistics in order to make recommendations that will help prevent similar deaths in future. A large part of the research that we do in regard to traffic injury is with the Traffic Injury Research Foundation of Canada, which is based in Ottawa and funded through the federal government. The office of the chief coroner has been one of the offices, then, that have signed on with this project and we've worked cooperatively with the traffic injury research for a number of years in researching the causes of accidents.

In order to do this research properly, we've established a policy within the office of the chief coroner that we will autopsy the drivers of vehicles and we will, as part of that autopsy, routinely do alcohol testing on these drivers. That allows us to gain the necessary information in order to do this research project properly to provide accurate and full figures. It also allows us to satisfy families and the courts that the cause of the death is related to alcohol or driver error or mechanical breakdown versus heart attack or some other medical cause.

Early on in this research, we did a project where we tested for drugs other than alcohol, and the results overwhelmingly indicated that the major problem, the major drug, was alcohol, that if alcohol was eliminated from drivers, we would go the majority of the way towards solving many of the problems. There were some findings of diazepam or Valium and a little bit of marijuana, cold remedies, things like that, but overwhelmingly it was alcohol that was the problem.

This early research led the office of the chief coroner to embark on a series of initiatives through the early 1980s in order to try to reduce the number of auto accidents on Ontario highways. We realized that if we worked along with other groups such as the Ministry of Transportation, the insurance industry and various other groups and we gave the same message, we may be able to influence public opinion, make some changes, bring about changes in legislation and policy and save some lives.

The three main thrusts at that time were to reduce the speed limits on the highways in Ontario, to ask for and try to convince people that seatbelt legislation was a good idea and to change attitudes and practices concerning drinking and driving on Ontario highways. We realized that the drinking and driving was probably the largest of the groups and one that's an ongoing one. All of them are ongoing problems.

But we realized that we should have a series of initiatives related to youth, and that included education early in school and intensive education, and trying to change social attitudes in the long term in regard to drinking and driving. It also included probably a system, in time, of graduated licences, which is where we're at now, and for the older driver, feeling that education isn't always the major thing that will work, a series of sticks and carrots, the sticks being year-round RIDE programs and increased pressure on the courts to convict and increase sentences.

These measures together did have some success. From 1980 to 1990, the number of fatalities on Ontario highways dropped from 1,702 to 1,286, so there were some 500 fewer deaths during that period of time. We also enjoyed considerable success in regard to blood alcohol and drinking and driving. The number of drivers who tested positive for any alcohol during that 10-year period went from 56.9% to 46.8%. The over 80 group fell from 47% to 32%. But I emphasize that those are improvements and those are real lives that have been saved, but those numbers of 46.8% of still positive in 1990 and the figure of 32.9% of over 80 mg are still too high and there's still considerable work to be done.

It's obvious to us at the office of the chief coroner, from the cases we see, that there are still three main problem areas that need to be addressed. The unlicensed driver -- and that's the driver who has had a licence suspension and continues to drive -- remains a very serious problem on Ontario highways. These are the drivers who are often very impaired as well, and they pose the double threat. The elderly driver and the increasing number of elderly drivers will call for special measures in coming years as well. The inexperienced driver is the third area, and obviously the area that we're focusing on at this point in time.

My remarks will generally deal with the young driver, the 16- to 19-year-old, because that's the group I can statistically pull out and examine. I can't examine easily the older, inexperienced driver, because when we are investigating a death, we may or may not be able to tell the full level of experience. We may or may not have that type of statistic. So my remarks are, in particular, in regard to the 16- to 19-year-olds.

I don't want to bore the committee with a lot of statistics and I haven't brought a great number. I want to preface the statistics that I bring by saying that it's fine for me to discuss numbers. Also, I as the chief coroner and the 400 coroners in Ontario have to deal with the families and the one-by-one tragedies that exist. I think we can't lose sight of that. These numbers are imposing and they're serious, but they also represent a tragedy to every one of those families and the extended families.

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The fatalities among drivers in Ontario: We have seen improvement. For the 16-to-19-year-old group, the numbers have fallen, from 1980, from 125 to 67; the 20-to-25 group from 192 to 128. That is improvement but it's still 200 lives lost a year.

These are only the figures for drivers. I'll emphasize in a moment the number of passengers that were being included in this group as well, and this is particularly significant in the young group. The number of passengers who are killed along with the drivers is startling in this group. I think we only have to think of recent events; there have been several accidents that have involved several young people in the same car with inexperienced drivers. This is one of the big problems and one of the tragedies of this age group.

One of the other themes I would point out is the problems with the 20- to 25-year-old group. The previous witness alluded to this and said many 20-year-old drivers are still terrible drivers. My statistics would be inclined to agree with him. The problem then, in my mind, isn't that we don't put 16-year-old drivers with experienced drivers, because first of all there's nothing to say they have to be 20 years old; they may be 40 or 44 or 50 years old. What it says to me is that we've got to do a much better job of educating our young drivers and establishing good driving patterns that are going to hold while they're 20 and 25 so that we reduce with time, through education and a long-term program, the number of deaths in this group as well.

The blood alcohol figures for these age groups are equally startling. It's somewhat amazing to me that in the 16- to 19-year-old group in 1980, 46% had blood alcohol readings over 80 mg. This is in a group that largely shouldn't have been drinking. The figures have improved considerably, but it's still 17.9%. In the 20 to 25 group, as you can see, the patterns get worse. The alcohol consumption goes up with over 80 mg at 55.3% and still in 1990 the figure is at 39.4%. This is a group that has to be educated. I believe you teach them early and you establish the pattern. The 39.4% is far too high a percentage and is leading to a large percentage of these deaths that we're seeing in this group.

As well, you'll note drivers and passengers under "Accidental Motor Fatalities." This is what I was alluding to earlier. In 1990 and 1991, in particular when we're looking at cars, 62 drivers in 1990, 49 passengers; in 1991, 39 drivers and 37 passengers, so the risk as well is in overloaded cars with young and inexperienced drivers. What happens, we believe, in many of these instances is that there's a lot of conversation, radios may be up, the driver becomes inattentive to what he or she is doing on the road and it's one more challenge to the driver.

I'd also point out, on this particular set of figures, that when one looks at the total number of motorcycle and motor vehicle fatalities versus the total number of accidental deaths in this age group, it's startling how high a percentage it represents: 117 out of 182 accidental deaths in 1990 and 88 out of 141 in 1991, and flipping to the age group for 20 to 25, one sees exactly the same pattern. Still, the number of passengers is relatively high, although less so than in the younger group. But the overall number compared to the number of accidental deaths is startlingly high: 199 to 311, 164 to 270.

Clearly, if one can find a way to reduce the number of motor vehicle fatalities within the group from 16 to 25, one will save the majority of the lives that are lost through accidents in Ontario. This, to me, becomes why it's so important to focus on this group. This, after all, is the group beginning its life with everything in front of it. If we can get them through that period safely, the statistics become much better later.

Our experience indicates that the problems with inexperienced drivers are the combination of inexperience plus night driving, weather conditions, the speed and the manoeuvres that are necessary on superhighways, driving diversions from passengers, and alcohol. We think that any program that is going to show improvement in the statistics and the number of deaths will require to attack these various problems that exist, and that's certainly what the graduated licence proposal does is attack these various areas.

We decided that the inquest system in Ontario did have a role to play in promoting graduated licences and hopefully leading to my appearance before a committee such as this and the day hopefully that the legislation is passed. We wanted the inquest to be able to look at and establish whether or not the factors on the previous sheet were accurate, and we believe that they are.

We wanted to make the problem real to the teenagers in Ontario and we did that by holding a number of inquests in various locations in Ontario, and often the youths were the actual witnesses. It hits home when you hold an inquest and they're talking about their friends and their friends who are no longer alive. We held many of those inquests in gymnasiums right in the schools in Ontario. We held a formal inquest and in many instances the schools cooperated and attendance for part of the inquest was compulsory in order to hit home on how serious this problem was and we made recommendations towards prevention.

We had multiple inquests across the province. Repeatedly, juries, made up of laypeople, when given the correct information and told about the problem and the possible solutions, endorsed the system of graduated licences in Ontario.

For my purposes then, in regard to the proposed legislation, it seems clear to me that we have a problem to solve regarding inexperienced drivers, that graduated licensing systems are a proven solution in other locations and will address our specific problems, and that any loss of privilege is more than compensation by the potential savings in lives.

Mr Turnbull: Tell me something, if you had your druthers and you were writing this legislation, would you go further than this legislation goes? One of the great concerns that has been expressed by the Insurance Bureau of Canada and indeed many other witnesses is the fact that in level 2 we introduce drivers to new experiences, those being night driving and also the 400 series roads without the requirement that an experienced driver be alone in those experiences. Do you think that that is a good idea? If you were going to change the legislation, how would you do it?

Dr Young: I think ideally I would agree with the insurance bureau in those submissions. I recognize that there are a number of competing pressures in regard to satisfying people that teenagers can get home from jobs and work and how long you keep them off the highway. So I'm a realist from that point of view and I accept that there were tradeoffs at the time that the proposals were made.

I would be more comfortable if those matters you raised were a little more stringent, but I also feel that what's proposed is 1,000% better than what we have now. So I endorse it as far as it goes, and I guess my feeling would be, it could go further and it would be useful. I think it's useful in regard to the highways that somehow people be checked out, that they receive some education in regard to highways, that they understand the concepts of merging and getting off highways. My own boys don't drive the car till I've been in the car with them and gone up and down the highways and merged and they've satisfied me that they understand those things.

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Mr Turnbull: The question of seatbelts that you spoke about at the beginning: I very strongly believe that we should not allow more than an accompanying driver in the front seat. I have concerns that by limiting it to the number of seatbelts, we will have three people in the front of the car, which, in my perception at least and certainly some of the other witnesses that we've had, is a distraction to the driver. Could you comment on that?

Dr Young: I think it is a potential distraction. Certainly, I think it's common sense that the more people in the car, the more distraction, particularly if they happen to be other young people. I think in an ideal world it would be better if they're limited to two. Frankly, I hadn't thought of it before, but I think it's a very sound principle.

The principle of everyone having a seatbelt is superb. In fact, we've seen other accidents in the province, including a major van accident last year in the Sudbury area, where there were far more people in the van than there were seatbelts. We're very interested in seeing eventually legislation that limits passengers to the same number of seatbelts in all vehicles in Ontario.

Mr Turnbull: Across the board, yes. With respect to seatbelts, it would seem to me that as drivers are gaining experience there's probably a slight tendency to have greater numbers of more emergency braking than you would have if you're a very experienced driver. Would it not be, given the problems associated with lap straps as opposed to the full shoulder harness, a further danger for people driving with those?

Dr Young: Some. Certainly a lap is some increased danger. Fortunately, the younger you are the more pliable you are -- certainly a lap belt is better than nothing at all. A three-point restraint is certainly the advisable way to go. I don't have any figures. I don't have a strong feeling that we've had a significant number of very serious injuries in teenagers just because of lap belts. More commonly, it's a question of were they wearing the belts at all or the accident was so overwhelming that no one could survive it. Intuitively, what you say is correct. I'm not sure that I can back it up in any way, though.

Mr Turnbull: Would you lean towards mandatory driver education?

Dr Young: You get into the problem with mandatory driver education as to how you fairly apply it and how much you can insist on, at what cost. That's the only difficulty I have. In terms of it being a good idea, certainly it's mandatory in my house. Fortunately, I have the financial resources to make it mandatory. But you run into the problem as to whether everybody can afford it. My only hesitation in saying that is, how do you make it accessible to everyone? But, otherwise, is it a good idea? Certainly it's a good idea.

Mr Turnbull: In your opinion as chief coroner, what is the overwhelmingly most important issue? Is it alcohol? Is it experience? Is it numbers of people in the car?

Dr Young: If I could only pick one, it would be keeping the inexperienced away from alcohol for as long as possible, and hopefully permanently. If we could do that on a long-term basis, the savings in lives goes on then through the 20 to 25 and on up through the ranks.

The inexperience came home graphically to me. I remember driving with one of my boys the first time when he drove at night. He had become quite a good day driver in the day but he was terrible at night until he'd been out a few times. But those are learnable, and they're learnable relatively quickly. You can learn how to drive in snow and such if somebody takes the time to take you out a few times and teach you. You can take someone out and teach him or her to get on and off a highway. The one behaviour you always want to teach them and you want them to never vary from in particular is the consumption of alcohol and getting behind the wheel.

Ms Murdock: Thank you for taking time out of what I'm sure is a busy schedule.

Dr Young: My pleasure.

Ms Murdock: I particularly want to focus in on any loss of privileges more than compensated for by potential savings of lives because a number of the comments that have been made have been on the inconvenience that might be caused in terms of not being able to get your 365 today and pass your licence tomorrow and be driving, and that there would be, with driver education training, a minimum eight months so that you would have to have an accompanying driver.

I guess from your presentation that your accompanying driver you would like to see not at the recommended 0.5 alcohol level but at a zero BAC as well?

Dr Young: I think that's a fair statement, because if we're going to teach someone about alcohol consumption and not drinking and driving, we should set a standard that's proper, and the proper standard should be zero to aim towards.

Ms Murdock: The other thing is, one of the recommendations of one of the presenters yesterday, was at level 1, that it be divided into a four-month and an eight-month time frame in terms of night driving, and that for the first four months of your level 1 graduated licence, you would drive in daylight hours only. For the next eight months of your 12-month period, depending on whether you took a driver ed course, of course, you would be required to be with an accompanying driver. You would then be able to do dusk till midnight, and then in level 2 you would do midnight to 5 am with an accompanying driver in order to gain experience. What would your comment on that be?

Dr Young: I have no problem with that. I think that's very sensible and allows some flexibility and allows that people are going to be gaining experience. Certainly my personal experience as well is that some of these skills can be picked up relatively quickly, and that kind of flexibility I think sounds very good.

Ms Murdock: Lastly, in terms of the level 1 period, because I don't know whether or not we could legitimately do it for the full 24 months, but in the level 1 period of the 12-month no passengers at all other than the accompanying driver. That's what you're recommending.

Dr Young: I think certainly the existence of passengers increases the risk considerably. The thing that happens is the radio goes on to not necessarily CBC, and it usually goes up a couple of notches, and there's usually a lot of conversation about turning in to McDonald's and go here and go there. The level of distraction goes up; there's no question. I think the less distraction we place on the inexperienced driver the better.

Mr Dadamo: We're indeed honoured to have you here, doctor. Thank you very much.

When you lose one life, it's one life too much, obviously. I was looking at the chart where you detailed the blood alcohol from 1980 to 1990 in the 16- to 19-year-old category. In 1980 it was 46.6%; in 1990 it drops to 17.9%. As I said, one is too many, but still there are some positives in the numbers that have dropped.

Dr Young: Very much so.

Mr Dadamo: Certainly. Maybe I don't see it, but I wanted to ask you, what are the factors that helped deliver a drop like that?

Dr Young: I think programs in the schools have been the major thing. The development in the 1980s of an emphasis to teach drinking and driving and alcohol-related problems in the school to a much larger extent and development of -- there was a program in Peel region that was developed with the crown attorneys, the police, the coroners and the education officials, and that spread across the province. The idea that you try to teach kids about designated drivers and phoning home and getting rides when they're impaired had a major success and it started to change attitudes. That's what I would attribute it to. We really targeted educating at an early age and I think it worked, largely.

Mr Dadamo: My own 16-year-old daughter was invited to a youth camp about a month ago out near the Sarnia area, and was going with four others and the driver was a 17-year-old in a van. I said to her that I would drive her because I didn't feel quite comfortable allowing her to go, but the parents of the 17-year-old didn't get it. I don't know what this person's driving habits would be, but obviously, what I thought of was that the music and chitter-chatter and all sorts of thing on the 401 didn't make me comfortable. I guess the learning process or some of the guidance has to come from parents in a situation like that.

Dr Young: I think so. Certainly I've attempted in my house to put in my own form of a graduated licence program, but it's a lot harder for a parent to battle on a case-by-case basis because I hear about how I'm too strict and I'm the worst father going. It's much easier if there's a standard and then people, if they want to impose a stricter standard beyond that, that's fine, but there's a tremendous amount of peer pressure about all of these issues that are dealt with in graduated licences. I think certainly every parent with teenagers coming in Ontario will applaud having to be able to say: "This is the law. It's not my choice any more."

1600

Mr Conway: Thank you, Dr Young. This is really a very thought-provoking set of data that you've provided. I'd like to turn to the two charts, "Fatalities-Drivers, Ontario, 1980, 1990" and "Fatalities-Drivers, Ontario, 1980, 1990, with Blood Alcohol over 80 mg." When I look at those two sets of data, the thing that strikes me is that we've spent a lot of time here and I think there's unanimous support for the principle of the graduated driver's licence and a lot of very powerful testimony to support it in principle. Now you come by with some data that really make me think. We may have something else here.

I look at the first chart, and the fatalities are greater in absolute terms in the 20 to 25 age category, and the illegal blood alcohol levels are high and not coming down as fast on the second chart. I guess I've got two questions. How is the graduated driver's licence going to help deal with that particular problem, with the 20 to 25 category? Is it presumably because it's going to inculcate better values in kids as they come through the system?

Dr Young: I'm hoping that. I see that as a real problem area. When I gathered these statistics, I was aware we had a problem in that age, but it jumped out at me as well and I had exactly the same thoughts as you did.

We saw the result in the numbers of drinking and driving by educating in the schools and by starting people off with a different way of approaching things. By going through a longer program of getting a licence, restricting it, tolerating no alcohol for a longer period, my thoughts are and certainly my hope will be, and I believe it will happen, that we will see a decrease in the 20 to 25 range and it will simply be a learning process that holds on for a lot longer.

Beyond that, I've thought about that group, and it's a very tough group to approach and to do a lot about. Many of those people are out of school. They're just beginning jobs in some instances. They may be into a pattern in their lives before they're married and they're kicking up their heels a little. It's a serious problem.

Mr Conway: When I look at the second chart -- and my friend Offer here reminds me, and he's got a question in a moment, we've been talking a lot here about blood alcohol levels at zero. Of course, you have to be reminded that you can't drink in this province until you're 19.

Dr Young: That's right.

Mr Conway: It's trite to say that, but then you look at data like these and you're reminded of what reality may be for a lot of people.

I was saying here yesterday that Dr Schabas has just concluded that very interesting survey of teenage behavioural patterns in Ontario in 1992. It's pretty breathtaking what's going on out there in light of some very well advertised risks. So I look at this and I say to myself: What are these 20- to 25-year-olds unlearning? What's happening there? Because even in the current system, which we all agree in terms of licensing is inadequate, there appears to be a certain pattern that deteriorates after three years.

The one thing that does happen is that it is legal to drink in this province when you're 19. We had a strong presentation from John Bates this morning arguing that you should move the drinking age up to 21, yet when I look at your data, boy, that doesn't suggest that would necessarily achieve the desired result.

Dr Young: I think we need to get people started for a significant period of time with zero tolerance and hope that's going to have the effect. I'm not sure beyond that how you do modify the behaviours. I totally agree with everything you've said. I'm not sure how you affect what happens between 20 and 25 and the culture that develops and the habits that develop through that time. I think we may have to have a careful look at that. We certainly have at various times -- we've dealt with, for example, the frosh party on the boat going to the Toronto Islands a couple of years ago. We had a very careful look at an inquest at that and made a whole series of recommendations about toning down initiation at various universities and community colleges, that type of atmosphere, and I know that some of the community colleges and universities are not running pubs on campus any more.

You can make an argument, on the other hand, that that drives them away and they have to get in cars and come home. There's no one ready and easy solution, but we have to change that kind of behaviour through that time period. It's probably, like drinking and driving itself, going to take many different approaches to do it.

Mr Offer: Thank you very much for your presentation. I also want to focus in on the charts that Mr Conway brought forward in your presentation. In your fatalities, drivers with blood alcohol over 80 mg, per cent, you had the ages 16 to 19 and 20 to 25. That's over the legal limit. Do you have figures on alcohol in the body? I mean, we know that a young person having this amount of alcohol, apart from it being illegal, is -- I mean, I just have a sense that if there was any alcohol, those numbers would be dramatically higher.

Dr Young: Yes, they would be. I have them at the office. Unfortunately, I don't think I have them with me. I didn't want to bury you in statistics, which we could have. I can get them and would certainly be happy to send them over.

Mr Offer: I certainly would like to see those numbers. The other point --

Dr Young: So, any alcohol at all? Not just the over 80?

Mr Offer: That's right.

Dr Young: That's fine. I can easily get those.

Mr Offer: The other point that I want to basically ask you is, under this proposal -- and we all are in agreement with the principle of the proposal -- basically there are going to be kids at 16, 17. They're going to start to get into the level 1. They're going to get into the level 2. They're going to be out of the level 2, probably, in two or three years. That whole process, they are still going to be under the age that they can legally consume alcohol in this province.

The proposals under levels 1 and 2 that say you have to have 0% is, I think, for the majority of people not going to really click home because it's illegal for them from beginning to end. The new driver with alcohol is not the 16-, 17- and 18-year-old. It's the 20-year-old; it's the 21- and 22-year-old. Is there some suggestion that you might give as to how you address the 16-, 17-, 18-, 19-year-old? Is it by virtue of penalty? How is it that you deal with the 20-, 21-, 22-year-old who is in fact the new driver with alcohol even though they may have been on the road five years?

Dr Young: I guess what comes immediately to mind is whether you extend through this period either a zero tolerance or a lower tolerance than you allow in the other drivers. Whether that would gain public acceptance, I'm not sure, but it's certainly a serious problem and it targets right into that 20- to 25-year-old age group.

Of the two things immediately come to mind, the most draconian of them is to say, "There should be zero tolerance for the first five or seven or eight years of your licence. After that, you're allowed up to 0.08." Or you say, "Well, we'll allow 0.04, half the legal requirement, after a certain number of years and gradually increase up to what's considered the legal limit now." Certainly that would, I think, go a long way and would address that kind of problem if it could be done.

The Chair: Dr Young, it is our pleasure that you were able to be here this afternoon and provide some very interesting information and some interesting points of view. We trust that any information you think would be of value to the committee as we continue our deliberations, you can forward to us, along with, of course, Mr Offer's specific request for information, because I think that would be most helpful.

So again, on behalf of the entire committee, thank you for taking the time out of what I know is a very busy schedule and helping us address this very important public safety issue.

Ms Murdock: I have just a correction for the record, Mr Chair, with regard to comments that were made this afternoon by Mr Annett's presentation with regard to novice drivers not being able to drive on the 400 series even with an instructor. I would point out that in the draft regulation to be made under the Highway Traffic Act, under the driver's licence sections on page 6, paragraph 5(1)4, it says, "The motor vehicle may not be driven on a highway designated by subsection (5)." Then under subsection 5(6), it says, "Paragraph 4 of subsection (1) does not apply if the accompanying driver is a driving instructor licensed in Ontario." So that does mean that even though you're at level 1, you would still be able to drive on the 400 series if you were in a driver education program.

Mr Cooper: Could we have somebody from the ministry come forward and tell us exactly what the law is on seatbelts with vans and trucks? There seems to be a question on that.

Ms Murdock: And in the back of the truck.

Mr Cooper: Or in the back of pickup trucks. The rationale for the point of all passengers having to wear seatbelts -- there seems to be some question on that.

The Chair: We have Mr Domoney, I believe, joining us to provide that information.

Mr Bob Domoney: There is a general misconception, I think, on the part of the public regarding the use of seatbelts. My understanding of the law is that a vehicle, if it was originally equipped with seatbelts, must have the seatbelts in it and operable. So you cannot take them out.

In the case of a pickup, for example, you have seatbelts in the bench but you obviously don't have them in the back of the pickup. It's more common in construction scenarios, where, for example, you might have a covered pickup or a van which is not equipped with belts in the back, or in ambulances, which is another example. Where those vehicles were not originally equipped, you need not put them in and you need not buckle up in those scenarios, but you must use all available seatbelts.

So if a vehicle, for example, is equipped with five seatbelts and you have six people in the vehicle, that is not illegal provided you aren't overcrowding the driver. You must buckle up five of those people, and you must do it in a certain priority. Children, those under 16, must be buckled up first. After that, one individual in that case could be in the vehicle legally without a seatbelt, provided you are not overcrowding the driver.

The rationale for what we've got in the graduated licensing system is, notwithstanding that that may be the existing law, in the case of an inexperienced driver it's important that you not have anyone unbuckled. Personally, I think that we should impose that law as a general condition, but we're saying that particularly in the case of an inexperienced driver, it's important that you not have unbuckled passengers.

Mr Cooper: It was my understanding that you couldn't have passengers in the back of a pickup truck.

Mr Domoney: You may.

Interjection: It's not against the law?

Mr Domoney: It's not against the law, and the reason it was not made illegal is in the scenario of the construction vehicle where you're transporting a number of construction workers to a construction site. That was, I believe, the original intent.

The Chair: Thank you very much. The committee is adjourned until 2 pm, Monday, September 13.

The committee adjourned at 1614.