I have the privilege of serving as the ranking member on the Highways and Transit Subcommittee. Prior to that, or a few years ago, I served for 6 years as chairman of the Aviation Subcommittee. The statistics, or the comparison between aviation and safety on our highways, is just staggering.

Unfortunately, we have more people killed in 3 1/2 months on our Nation's highways than we have had killed in all U.S. aviation accidents combined since the Wright brothers' flight in 1903. But more importantly I want to commend the authors of this legislation, because we need to do everything we can to call attention to the record of teen drivers and raise the awareness of teenagers as to how dangerous our Nation's highways can be.

According to the most recent statistics by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, our safest drivers, contrary to what a lot of people believe, are those 75 and over. The second safest group of drivers are those 65 to 74.

The 75 and over age group has 2.5 accidents per 10,000 drivers. That compares to the 16-to-20 group which has 13.3 percent per 10,000 drivers. It's an amazing statistic as to how dangerous teenage driving is and how safe our older drivers are.

I just wanted to say that I rise in strong support of this resolution on Teen Driver Safety Week.