Effort Under Way To Ban Students From Driving During Lunch Breaks
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A Queens lawmaker wants the state to ban schoolchildren from driving cars during their lunch periods — even if they have driving licenses.
Assemblyman Michael Gianaris, a Democrat, said he came up with the idea after a Long Island student crashed into two cars while driving during a recent lunch break, killing his two 17-year-old passengers and a 13-year-old boy in another car.
The deaths prompted the boys’ high school in Smithtown, N.Y., to revoke the so-called open campus policy that allowed students to go out for drives during lunch breaks. Car accidents that occurred as recently as 2005 have forced other local schools to make the same policy change, but Mr. Gianaris said 13 school districts on Long Island allow open lunches.
“Why do we want to wait for teenagers to die before we realize this policy does not make sense?” Mr. Gianaris said.
He pointed to a 2002 study by researchers at the University of North Carolina that found that teenagers are three times as likely to crash if their school district allows lunchtime driving than if it does not. “I don’t see why we would want a situation to exist that increases a student’s likelihood of getting into an accident by 300%,” he said.
An attorney representing the family of Matthew Ravner, a Long Island boy who was struck by a car and killed during his lunch break in 2005, said he applauds the change. Ravner’s family is now suing several parties they blame for the boy’s death: the student driver of the car that hit him; the owner of the car, and a security company hired by the school. It is also targeting the school district.
Citing the ongoing litigation, the attorney, Stephan Peskin, would not say whether the suit specifically targets the school’s open lunch policy. But he did criticize the policy. “Look, you’re dealing with a bunch of young guys and girls. Hormones are flowing,” Mr. Peskin said. He added: “They’re licensed by the state of New York; you can’t stop them from driving. But you have to be able to, when they’re in school, control the students under your control.”
