AUGUSTA – A bill that would create a public accident database for new drivers received a public hearing before the Transportation Committee on Friday.

The drivers’ names would not be listed, but a collision rate for each driving school would be, according to the legislation sponsored by Sen. Walter Gooley, R-Farmington.

“Collecting and publishing the collision rate of each school – public, private or commercial – will give the parents and students an opportunity to make an informed choice when they are choosing a driver education option,” said Glen Soucie, president of the Maine Driver Safety Foundation in Augusta.

Gooley said Soucie approached him with the idea, which is aimed at improving young-driver safety.

Soucie, who owns A-1 Driving School for teens and adults, as well as a corporate driving school, said the information could give driving schools an incentive to do a better job.

“If schools become aware that the collision rates of their students will be tracked and published, they may begin to focus more on what they need to do to produce safer drivers and not simply push the students through the course,” he said.

Committee members raised questions about how the database would portray rural driving schools versus urban schools, where accident rates might be higher simply because of population and for how many years drivers would be tracked.

Soucie said he trusted the committee to make decisions about those points.

Cathy Curtis, deputy secretary of state for the Bureau of Motor Vehicles, which would be responsible for the database, testified against the measure.

“Regardless of the amount of time the parents and instructors spend supervising driving, in the end it is up to the new driver to use good judgment and practice good behavior,” she said. “It would be unfair to hold them responsible for the young driver’s choice to practice behavior which leads to increased crash risk.”

A representative from the Department of Public Safety and the Maine State Police was neutral on the measure.

The bill is scheduled for a work session Thursday.