Rep. Stephen Kinsey, D-Philadelphia, and Rep. Eric Nelson, R-Westmoreland, are drafting a bill that would allow 15-year-olds to get both a learner’s permit and a junior driver’s license. Kinsey and Nelson said the required training and safety rules would apply to 15-year-olds, including passenger limitations and nighttime driving restrictions.

“While state law allows young people in Pennsylvania to begin working before they are 16 years old, it limits their employment choices by prohibiting them from driving until the age of 16,” Kinsey and Nelson wrote in their legislative memorandum. “If Pennsylvania teens wish to work and are legally permitted to do so,they should not be denied the right to travel to their place of employment. To end this arbitrary age discrimination, we will be introducing legislation to change the age of eligibility for a junior driver’s license to 15 years old and establish an age of eligibility of 15 years old for a learner’s permit.”

Kinsey and Nelson say West Virginia, Ohio and Maryland allow 15-year-olds to drive. In 2019, legislation was introduced in Ohio that would have required teenage drivers under the age of 18 to use their learner’s permits for a full year, which would have raised the age to get a driver’s license from 15.5 years of age to 16.5 years of age. That bill didn’t progress in the Ohio state legislature. Supporters said drivers between the ages of 15 and 19 comprised about 5% of Ohio’s driving population but were involved in about 15% of all accidents. According to the Ohio State Highway Patrol, from 2015 to 2017, drivers who were 15 to 19-years-old were involved in about 15 percent of all traffic crashes in the state. Those crashes resulted in 285 deaths and almost 42,000 injuries, according to the Associated Press.

“Joining these states would mean more financial empowerment for Pennsylvania’s youth and more tax revenue for the state,” Nelson and Kinsey wrote. “Working teens learn accountability while contributing to their communities.”