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House raises supervised driving time, tweaks permit age in practice-permit overhaul
Summary
House Bill 343 lowers the earliest practice-permit eligibility and increases required supervised driving time: after floor debate the House approved the sponsor’s compromise (permit earlier by three months and 40 supervised hours) and passed the bill 64–5.
Representative Roger Barris introduced HB 343 as a safety-focused bill to give teen drivers more supervised practice time. He said the bill would allow practice permits earlier than the current 15 years, 9 months and would increase the required supervised practice hours from 30 to 40. Barris cited crash statistics and research showing younger drivers are overrepresented in fatalities and crashes and said the additional supervised hours aim to reduce those risks.
Floor debate featured several amendment efforts. Representative Wallace moved to increase required supervised hours from 40 to 50 and spoke at length about the added training time needed to form driving habits; Representative Byrd and others proposed substituting a lower permit age (15 years without the six-month qualifier) and other changes. The House considered but rejected multiple amendments to change age and hour thresholds.
In final action the House adopted the sponsor’s base changes (shortening the eligibility-window by months and increasing supervised driving hours to 40) and passed HB 343 with 64 yes votes and 5 no votes. The bill will be forwarded to the Senate for further consideration.
