MY TWO CENTS: Sticker shock

The entrance to the Gar­den State Park­way South is maybe less than a half mile down Route 66 from the Asbury Park Press build­ing in Neptune.

Because it is on the right side of the road, I was in the right lane, my turn sig­nal on.

I was about to turn right onto the entrance ramp, when I noticed the car in the “fast” lane to my left, barely a car length ahead of me, begin­ning to slow down.

Call it ESP or women’s intu­ition, but I had a feel­ing the dri­ver was going to make a sud­den right and cross over my lane, cut­ting me off to take the exit.

I was correct.

Thank good­ness my reflexes are still pretty fast. I slowed down and nearly stopped, leav­ing about two feet between the front of my car and the back­side of the other vehi­cle. As I fol­lowed it down around the ramp and into the right lane of the Gar­den State Park­way, I noticed the bright red sticker on the license plate. It was one of the stick­ers that per­mit or pro­ba­tion­ary license hold­ers younger than 21 are now required to display.

As I moved into the left lane and passed the car, I saw the dri­ver, a pretty young thing in pig­tails look­ing like a deer in the head­lights. As I left her in my dust, she was still hes­i­tat­ing about pulling out into the left lane, as I had, to avoid being forced to take the next exit just a few feet ahead. I won­der if she ever made it.

The red stick­ers are a require­ment of Kyleigh’s Law, named after a teen who was killed in a 2006 crash. The law requires any per­mit or pro­ba­tion­ary license holder younger than 21 to stick red remov­able decals to the license plates of the car they drive.

There is a fine of about $100 if they don’t pur­chase the stick­ers (they cost $4) and put them on their cars.

When I first heard about the man­dated stick­ers a cou­ple of months ago, I thought they were a bit exces­sive. I had for­got­ten about the time, when I was 17, try­ing to maneu­ver “Splish-Splash,” my 1949 red Buick con­vert­ible with a straight 8 cylin­der engine and “Dynaflow” out of Ronda Carlough’s dri­ve­way in Ridge­wood, and rip­ping the hose faucett off the side of her house. The car was a decade old and didn’t have power steer­ing, but it was all I could afford.

The Gar­den State Park­way was under con­struc­tion at the time and nobody could ever have imag­ined that the main flow of traf­fic even­tu­ally would be aver­ag­ing 80 mph. I think if I were 16 or 17, I’d be pretty ner­vous about try­ing to jump into a lane of vehi­cles mov­ing that fast.

Now that I have had my first expe­ri­ence with a young “stick­ered” dri­ver, I real­ize that the stick­ers are not just required so that police can “tar­get” inex­pe­ri­enced dri­vers who aren’t obey­ing traf­fic rules or have too many pas­sen­gers in the car or are text-messaging their friends. The stick­ers also are there to warn vet­eran dri­vers like myself that the oper­a­tor of the other vehi­cle might pos­si­bly do some­thing erratic and impul­sive — such as pull across two lanes — and there­fore to give it some extra room.

I’m glad I did. Get­ting into a crash is not a good way to get your kicks on Route 66.

(Orig­i­nally posted on www.app.com)