The 100 deadly days of summer: New Iowa law ramps up risks for teen drivers
The 100 deadly days of summer: New Iowa law ramps up risks for teen drivers 1

(Photo by Thomas Barwick/Getty Images)

Iowa Writers 'Collaborative. Linking Iowa readers and writers.Summertime!

Sponsored
Last day of school! Graduation parties! Cookouts! Camping! What a great time to be a young teen enjoying the roller coaster rush into summer.

Getting that first paid job is a summer rite of passage. It’s been an age-old ritual for many teens to impatiently wait to work until they’re issued a driver’s license at 16.

But no worries, Iowa is fixing that problem. A new law permitting them to legally drive to their jobs when they’re as young as 14 1/2 years old means they can go to even greater lengths to solve Iowa’s worker shortage. Gov. Kim Reynolds signed it on May 17.

In 2022, a new law enabled 16- and 17-year-olds to care for kids at child care centers without direct supervision. Last year, the governor signed a law allowing 16- and 17-year-olds to obtain an exemption to work at jobs including excavation, demolition and roofing as part of an employer training or school work-study. Teens over age 16 also would be permitted to sell and serve alcohol as long as the restaurant kitchen remains open. Expanded work hours for 14- and 15-year-olds also lets them work until 11 p.m. in the summer, 9 p.m. during the school year, and up to six hours on a school day. (Iowa’s state law doesn’t comply with federal law, creating a gray area for employers.)

But these laws weren’t enough. A new law was needed so that younger Iowa teens could legally drive to these new fields of opportunity. Legislators justified their votes on the premise of helping minors develop skills in the workforce. The governor stated that “opportunities to earn and save to build a better life should be available” to young adults.

Few would disagree about the value of developing a good work ethic. My sister and I rose in the dark mornings (before the era of daylight saving time) so that Dad could drive us two miles to the closest town, where we boarded a cattle truck with other teen girls seated on makeshift benches around the perimeter, huddling beneath blankets in the cool morning air. Our destination? Detasseling hybrid seed corn for Garst & Thomas. It didn’t last the entire summer, so we had time for swimming lessons and the 4-H county fair.

Our farm family wasn’t well-to-do, but my three siblings and I didn’t need money for a cell phone, or a car that we weren’t old enough to drive. Year later, my own kids had plenty of time for  swimming, 4-H, and softball. They found summer jobs after they were 16. Their work ethic didn’t suffer.

Don’t make any mistake about it: the laws loosening established child labor protections allow employers to pay lower wages to their young employees. They also run counter to the goal of keeping kids focused on high school graduation. What other lengths are lawmakers willing to go to solve Iowa’s worker shortage?

Distracting new technology

Motor vehicle safety professionals refer to the time between Memorial Day and Labor Day as the “100 Deadly Days of Summer” due to a significant spike in teen fatal crashes. Iowa’s new minor permit law will allow teens to drive as far as 25 miles to jobs or farm-related work.

The 100 deadly days of summer: New Iowa law ramps up risks for teen drivers 2
(Photo via Getty Images)

A couple of decades ago, Iowa teens as young as 14 1/2 were issued minor school licenses to drive between home and school and extracurricular activities. According to the Iowa Department of Public Safety, Iowa is one of only a handful of states that allow minors as young as 14.5 to drive unsupervised.

As a parent, it never seemed like a good idea. Motor vehicle crashes already are the #1 cause of death for U.S. teens. Teens are three times more likely to be killed in a car accident than drivers age 20 and older, according to AAA. I wrote about the merits of graduated driver’s licenses in a 2007 column in Successful Farming titled, “Just Dying to Drive.”

Several years later, two of my nieces skidded on ice during an early morning drive to a school activity. Their vehicle rolled over, and they ended upside down in a farm field. Although one was life flighted to Des Moines, both were lucky not to be seriously injured.

Such crashes aren’t unusual. In Iowa, young drivers were involved in 16.3% of fatal car crashes in 2021, one of the highest rates nationwide. In 2023 alone, 14- to 17-year-olds in Iowa were involved in over 4,000 car crashes, leading to 17 fatalities and 94 serious injuries.

Today teens have access to a new toolbox of destruction while they’re driving: cell phones, texts, Instagram, and Snapchat.

Sponsored

Protection from predatory employers

This loosening of child labor laws in Iowa is occurring at the same time that child labor violations in industry are rising. In 2023, more than 5,800 kids in eight states were hired in violation of federal child labor laws. Packers Sanitation Services, Inc., Wisconsin, paid more than $1.5 million in penalties  for hiring children as young as 13 years old to clean meatpacking plants.

Earlier this month, Fayette Janitorial Service of Somerville, Tennessee, paid $649,304 in penalties for violating the Fair Labor Standards Act by employing children as young as 13 years old to clean equipment at a meatpacking plant in Sioux City. As many as 23 kids were working overnight shifts cleaning at the Seaboard Triumph plant. It is the first such case in Iowa.

How many of these children who end up working long hours in dangerous jobs are immigrant children on their own in the U.S.?

If you saw the biographical drama “Cabrini” earlier this year, you know that it focused a close-up lens on the plight of orphaned Italian immigrant children left to fend for themselves in New York City in the late 19th century. It features a scene where two youth took jobs working at a pump station, where one was killed in an accident. Past generations of Americans struggled to obtain greater worker protections, but Congress couldn’t push the Fair Labor Law across the finish line until 1938.

Most kids eagerly anticipate their first job, and typically don’t question their safety. It’s hard not to suspect that the loosening of child labor laws in Iowa and about 11 other states in the past few years isn’t targeted at kids whose parents struggle to make ends meet.

Too far, too fast

In my work as a farm editor, I cautioned families against allowing their kids to perform jobs that weren’t age-appropriate. Parents had a sincere desire to instill their kids with a work ethic. In fact, many farmers took great pride in teaching their young kids to drive tractors. In one study of our readers, conducted by the University of Illinois, the results revealed that parents generally disapproved of pre-teen children driving tractors, but they felt their own kids were quite capable. But what about their ability to make sound judgments in emergency situations?

In some instances, I pointed to the examples of non-ag industries as well as urban families to illustrate that the injuries and fatalities of young kids in accidents weren’t the norm. Today, as child labor laws are loosened, it increasingly seems to be. We’re putting our kids in harm’s way.

An estimated one-third of teens today hold jobs in retail, food service, cleaning, and restaurants. Most of these jobs weren’t available to my kids as teens because they couldn’t legally drive to get there.

Iowa’s new minor permit law takes effect on July 1, allowing more inexperienced drivers on our roads.

Yea! School’s out! The Memorial Day weekend was packed with graduation parties, picnics, and music festivals. But when I drove by the school in a neighboring town on a beautiful day this week, the parking lot was full to overflowing. The occasion? The community had come together – not to celebrate – but to mourn the loss of a 17-year-old student killed a one-car rollover crash on May 16.

This column first appeared on Cheryl Tevis’ blog Unfinished Business, and it is republished here via the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative.

Editor’s note: Please consider subscribing to the collaborative and its member writers to support their work.

The post The 100 deadly days of summer: New Iowa law ramps up risks for teen drivers appeared first on Iowa Capital Dispatch.