The UK is about to deny 17-year-old drivers a full driving license until they're 18. Restrictions during the new, probationary period would include motorway (highway) restrictions and a zero blood alcohol level. Research by the Department for Transport claims the changes could save up to 1000 lives each year. The Times says the move would also bring Briton into line with the majority of other European Union member nations. Americans might take a cue from their English cousins. Most U.S. states issue licenses to 16-year olds; South Dakota allows 14-year-olds behind the wheel. American teens currently account for their unfair share of automotive death and destruction. During 2005, drivers aged 20 and below were roughly 250 percent more likely to get in an accident than the national average. Their chance of a fatal wreck was twice the norm. In fact, car accidents are now the leading cause of death for American teens.
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If they combine this with lowering the drinking age, we might have a rational way of dealing with 19 year olds.
Age is often irrelevant to a person’s maturity behind the wheel. I’d rather see better driving instruction, more thorough exams and more severe loss of license for serious infractions.
I'm totally in favor of the idea – just think about the land saved at the local high school when you don't need a student parking lot. Plus it wouldn't hurt the little darlings to go through the humiliation of using the bus until their 18. Needed for their after school jobs? *******. Bicycles work just fine, and today's youth is too fat and soft anyway.
You do NOT need a car for an after school job.
Let’s say you work five days a week at your $7/hr job for 20 hours a week. After taxes you’ll clear about $400 a month. $100 worth of gas per month, $75 worth of insurance, $150 for the car payment, and you’re left with $75 per month. That leaves just enough money for 25 gallons of gas for weekend recreation…but since you work four hours a day after school, you haven’t done your homework and you have no recreation time left on weekends.
A low driving age isn’t the problem. Low quality driving instruction is. New drivers are not made aware of crucial keys to driving, such as realizing that every vehicle has a limit on handling and braking. They’re not taught lane discipline or how to scan the road ahead of them, and are preached to death about the dangers of driving while intoxicated, but not about driving while texting. A real hands-on course is needed, not a quick jaunt around the block to see if they know how to properly yield at an intersection.
I don’t think it will ever work. Some parents will revolt. They often use their older children as chauffeurs for their younger siblings. Take that away, and you create transportation problems for some people.
…but since you work four hours a day after school, you haven’t done your homework and you have no recreation time left on weekends.
That would be true if school weren’t so ridiculously easy. I rarely had homework in school. As a matter of fact, I was bored to tears most of the time.
Maybe driving privileges for those under 18 should be tied to grades; make the honor roll, keep your license.
Without quality driving instruction, even smart kids can turn out to be horrible drivers.
By the way, I agree with better instruction as well. As I recall, driver’s ed. was even easier than my other classes.
I actually asked when we would be going out to learn skid control. The instructor laughed and waved me off. My dad took me out to large, empty parking lots in the rain or snow and made sure I knew what to do.
Ain’t gonna happen.
Yes, we need better instruction, enforcement, etc.
Stop coddling the little brats and start making them pay for their decisions at a younger age. You will have less problems.
My mother works at a top university. She sees the results of modern parenting all the time. These kids can’t do anything without their parents until junior year – if they ever learn at all.
I have grandparents in rural Oklahoma. I would go most summers. When I was 11 a 13 year-old neighbor (neighbors there are up to 5 miles away) would drive us around in his dad’s pickup. If you have a farm your children 11 or over can drive outside of any city limits. That was a trip. I do remember him to be a good driver. Never any close calls, and he would drive pretty fast. I think better driver’s ed would be a much preferable alternative to raising the age. I’m not too old to remember how being able to drive at 16 was one of the few good things about that age.
You’re just going to move the statistics… inexperience probably causes more accidents than anything else, and if you raise the driving age, you’re just going to raise the age at which most accidents occur.
Making high schoolers take the bus? I’m sure the schools would LOVE that, especially when they have to hire 3x as many bus drivers and extend the bus routes out to accommodate sports practices so all of the kids get home. Or would you rather have mummy and daddy clog up the streets and highways around schools even more by driving their kids to school every day? There’s a reason they let kids as young as 14 get school permits — so they don’t have to have extra bus routes.
But then, I grew up in nebraska, where most of the kids were driving tractors before they were tweens. And dad’s pickup as soon as they could reach the pedals. Better drivers education, and more of it, is what is needed — and stiffer penalties for kids that break the rules.
You’re just going to move the statistics… inexperience probably causes more accidents than anything else, and if you raise the driving age, you’re just going to raise the age at which most accidents occur.
There are plenty of statistics on people who start driving later in life. And they show the opposite of what you claim, since new older drivers don’t get in anywhere near as many accidents per capita as new younger drivers.
The risk-assessment portions of a 16-year-old’s brain are still forming.
Studies tend to indicate that driver training is fairly useless in reducing accident rates. At best, it seems to have a temporary effect, which in young people is offset by the fact that the availability of driver training usually results in more of them being put behind the wheel.
Nonce is correct about the root of the problem. What keeps people safe is not so much the training regimen, but a healthy fear of death. Young people take unnecessary risks, and unnecessary risks taken while driving are what get people killed. Education can’t do much to overcome that.
NICKNICK:
Some high schoolers use that left-over money to save for college, which I hear is pretty expensive.
Also, one should not underestimate the value of a kid being able to transport him- or herself (or their younger siblings) to and from their sport of choice. I mean, it’d be great if mom and dad could attend every single game, but sometimes that’s not feasible.
(Personally, one of the rules I had to obey in exchange for permission to drive was that playing “chauffeur” for my brother took priority over any recreational activity. Also, I had to do a lot of the grocery shopping.)
Okay, fine. Raise the driving age. But be prepared to better fund public transportation and other programs to offset the fact that all those teens have to get where they need to go, somehow. I’m sure most parents would not vote for such a proposal, since it’d mean great inconvenience, lost work, and more time spent in traffic jams to try to transport their kids everywhere, especially high schoolers. The schools are already underfunded — good luck trying to get them to use the school bus system to schlep high schoolers home at various hours of the day.
LoserBoy–
Yeah, college is expensive, but the finances are tricky, i think. Having a little money in your pocket goes a long way toward avoiding credit card debt. $200+ dollars of books per semester can add up with interest. On the other hand, there’s little point to slaving away all of your free time for just a few thousand a year. College is expensive enough that taking out a bigger loan won’t make much of a difference–kinda like opting for $400 heated seats on a $35K car.
I think that having transportation is awesome in regard to sports practices and such, but I have a hard time getting past my memories of friends spending all their time at work just so they can pay for the upkeep on the car that they used just to get to work. Having parents with an extra car and that are willing to let the kid use it is ideal.
Either way, the point of the article is driving age. I think that better instruction and enforcement is the key. I spend three hours a day on the road, and I guarantee that on any given day I see more dangerous violations than a cop in a speedtrap will see in a week.
nonce and Adrian Imonti are right. Both immaturity AND inexperience contribute to the high death toll of young drivers. So raising the driving age will help with the immaturity part.
Sure there would be higher costs, but the savings in life and limb would be worth it.
Regarding education and enforcement, I’ve stated before that no one has yet devised a course to keep people from crashing — attitude predominates. OTOH, a nearby cop is the best way to quickly get “educated,” provided the cop is really enforcing the laws.
Kids need to take more responsibility earlier. It’s a bad idea to be so overly protective. We need much less nanny-statism in our lives – let’s do it for the children.
I also think we should lower the drinking age (again) to 18. I wouldn’t want both privileges to begin simultaneously, as they would appear to in the UK.
But be prepared to better fund public transportation and other programs to offset the fact that all those teens have to get where they need to go, somehow.
We need just 2 bus lanes: one to Starbucks, one to the mall. Given that most malls have starbucks, you kill two birds with one stone!
Most insurance studies have proved that teenagers have a low consciousness of risk, which therefore means they have a greater chance of having accidents. Starting behind the wheel later DOES decrease the risks of accidents.
France has another system: you can pass a provisional driver’s licence at 16 instead of 18. You go through the same 20 hours of theoretical and 20 hours of practical training, and after that, you can drive for 2 years when accompanied by an adult (25 yrs old+), whose name appears on that licence (i.e. not any random buddy). In order to validate the program and benefit from lower insurance rates, you must drive at least 5,000 km (not sure what the exact number is) in a variety of situations, and keep a journal of your experiences.
Once you turn 18, you pass the driving exam to get your full licence.
In any case, for 2 years after having received your driver’s licence, you must have an “A: sticker at the back of your car, for apprentice, and are subjected to lower speed limits.
I love that system: you actually learn to drive for good, with trained instructors, and then you get to drive for 2 years with your parents, who can teach you about all sorts of unusual situations. After which the trained instructors make sure your parents taught you the right thing!
Oh, and the driver’s licence success rate is 65% for theoretical training and 65% for practical training, for an overall success rate under 50%. You fail, you go back to school for 5-10 hours.
The number one key rule in all nanny state legislation is to make sure the young’uns of today can’t do what we all did when we was young. No you can’t drive, you can’t drink, wear your seatbelt, wear a bicycle helmet, don’t go wandering around at night, no fireworks, etc. etc. etc. How in the hell did anyone live past the age of 20 back then? WE SHOULD ALL BE DEAD!
Anyway, my kids worked worked since they were 16 and drove too, and seem to be fine. Hunh. This never ending desire to control everyone else will end up controlling you too. Who needs freedom? Safety is much more important…… If it only saves one life, it was worth it…ahhhh….
Now that I am sufficiently removed from the affected age cohort, I can say yes, yes I am in favour of such a change.
Seriously though, in the U.S. is this regulated federally or at the state level?
Let me tell you, in a rural community this would be very unpopular.
-Need to stay after school? Someone has to pick you up.
-Want to go hang out with your friends? Someone has to drive you there.
-Want to take your girl out to the movies? Better hope your parents like her because they’re driving.
-Want to get a job? Better make sure mom or dad can take you there.
Raising the age for driver’s license will just keep kids dependent on their parents longer. They need to start having more freedom and learning some responsibility before they get turned out into society after high school. A driver’s license is usually the first exposure kids have to an authority other than parents or school.
And yeah, I’ve been driving since I was 12.
They should raise the standard of the driving test to UK or European standards before worrying about changing the driving age.
cliffg: The number one key rule in all nanny state legislation is to make sure the young’uns of today can’t do what we all did when we was young. No you can’t drive, you can’t drink, wear your seatbelt, wear a bicycle helmet, don’t go wandering around at night, no fireworks, etc. etc. etc. How in the hell did anyone live past the age of 20 back then? WE SHOULD ALL BE DEAD!
I just love this line of thinking. Truth is, a lot more people DID die back then, on a per capita and (where applicable) per miles traveled basis. But the vast majority lived. Could we do better? Sure, and we did.
If driving were so inherently dangerous that some critical mass of people did die, it would be banned entirely. Look at what happened to dirigibles after the Hindenburg incident.
I’m not sure raising the driving age would fly in the US, what with our lack of public transportation and our high schoolers’ obsession with extracurricular activities and jobs.
“Needed for their after school jobs? *******. Bicycles work just fine, and today’s youth is too fat and soft anyway.”
For much of the country bicycles do not work just fine.
Lets keep treating young adults as babies so that they will remain infantile well into their 40s. Know wonder most teens rebel.
I have been driving on road since I way 12 and I taught my daughter to drive at 13…On a 5-speed stick…In Paris. It only took about an hour for her to stop making a nuisance of herself to other drivers. I am a big believer in the Throw-kids-into-the-deep-end-of-the-pool education method. It forces them grow-up, think for themselves, and become responsible.
You’re in Texas. You turn 16. You take driver’s education, which is telling you not to drive drunk, and to memorize a small subset of the driving laws in a small book. You go to take your driving test. You drive in rather normal situations a bit, and watch normal situations a bit. It’s a few multiple choice questions, and they’re easy. Very easy. That’s the process I went through, and from the sound of it, several fellow Texans here went through as well. I had my license on my 16th birthday, and had no idea what driving was really like, and only knew the fairly basic laws governing an activity that is expensive, dangerous, and demanding.
I would have rather been exposed to a lot more driving, more intensive and challenging classroom, and been certified to drive with restrictions – only cars under a certain weight, or low horsepower, or able to stop from 20/40/60 within a certain distance (which would tested in the yearly SAFETY inspection). Want to drive an SUV? Get an SUV license. Want to drive a fast car? Yep, another license. Want to drive a motorcycle? Oh, we already have that. How about a big rig? Yep, that’s already covered too. Have the driver place their license on their windshield as they’re driving (like a Tolltag), and scan it like they do with radar. Ticket people and revoke licenses as a rule when people put others’ lives in danger.
None of this will happen. As our consumer society and market economy dictates, safety on the roads takes a back seat to consumer desires and the car manufacturer’s ability to play to those desires. There is no way in the USA that we’d legislate ANYTHING that would prevent the automakers from selling vehicles, and making licenses harder to get would do that. Raising the driving age would do it as well. So, since we all want to believe we’re free to do as we please, safety must take a back seat to capitalism. And the 16 year olds must remain uneducated. After all, their inexperience creates more demand for cars after they total their first (and second, and third) vehicles.
As long as the kids are on their parents liability insurance policy and they are required to carry sufficient (much higher then currently required) liability insurance then fine.
Draconian enforcement.
Problem is that a very high percentage of people use schemes to not have their kids on their policies and externalize ownership of some POS car because the rates for kids are very high. It takes an army of lawyers to collect damages and the parents of the dumbest kids usually have no assets.
Recently our daughter got her license. California has a tightly restricted license for those under 18, which is a good idea.
I was shocked that for her on-the-road driving test the instructor didn’t take her on the highway at all. A little bit of low speed motoring around town and she was considered good to go. Since we are providing the car (an old Volvo 240) and the insurance we have made it clear that even though the state thinks she is ready to go anywhere, anytime that isn’t the way it works in our home. Bit by bit she is getting a larger operating zone and time window as she demonstrates the experience and temperament to handle it.
The existing state of affairs with driver training and certification in the US is a bad joke and a lot of people are dying because of it. I wish we had a system more like Germany’s where it is very hard and expensive to get a license. A system modeled after what it takes to get a private airplane pilot’s license would be great!
To those who say just throw the kids into the driving pool, no thanks. They aren’t only putting their kids at risk, but more importantly everyone else with whom the roads are shared!
I’m against raising the driving age to 18. It should be raised to 21.
“The number one key rule in all nanny state legislation is to make sure the young’uns of today can’t do what we all did when we was young. No you can’t drive, you can’t drink, wear your seatbelt, wear a bicycle helmet, don’t go wandering around at night, no fireworks, etc. etc. etc. How in the hell did anyone live past the age of 20 back then? WE SHOULD ALL BE DEAD!”
Well, some are dead. My dad used to coach little league and he’d pile 15 or so kids in the back of his pickup and off we’d go to the ballgame. We didn’t have an accident, but some other people driving kids in the bed did have accidents and the kids died. That’s why they don’t let you ride in the bed anymore.
Seatbelts and bike helmets are good ideas. They save lives and brains. Can’t see anyone being upset by that. Fireworks are for retards – ask my neighbor who’s garage burned down because of the neighbor kids playing with fireworks
I don’t mind a bit of sensible legislation.
“I’m against raising the driving age to 18. It should be raised to 21.”
The US does not have the public transportation infrastructure to support that.
Raise the driving age to 18 and kids will be going off to college and “the real world” away from their parents with less than a year of driving experience. Yeah, that sounds like a fantastic idea.
The idea that a 2 year maturity difference is really going to matter is ridiculuous. The real problem is the lack of serious driver education. Anything else is just an attempt to sidestep the issue.
PerfectZero: The real problem is the lack of serious driver education.
The bulk of the research indicates that the opposite is true. Driver education training does not reduce crash rates, and actually increases the number of crashes by allowing a higher proportion of teens to obtain driver licenses.
The problem isn’t with a lack of technical ability, and it certainly isn’t with an absence of motor skills, the one area in which young people tend to excel as compared to the overall driving pool. As just one example, Johns Hopkins prepared a study in 1995 entitled “Understanding Youthful Risk Taking and Driving” which specifically studied this issue and found the problem to be one of behavior, not education:
Youth, especially males, are substantially overrepresented in motor vehicle crashes and fatalities. Experiential, developmental, psychosocial, and personality factors all likely contribute. Novice drivers quickly attain proficiency in such skills as steering and braking. Over a period of months, they learn to concentrate their visual fixations in the vehicle’s projected path, and to use peripheral vision to locate the vehicle in the lane. Lagging behind acquisition of motor skills is development of decisional skills. Studies show youth more likely to engage in riskier behaviors such as faster driving, tailgating, and refraining from safety belt use. Youth often overestimate their driving skills, and tend to perceive themselves as less vulnerable to a crash than their peers. They also may attach priority to social interaction within the vehicle to the detriment of the driving task at hand. Adding to potential risks for selected youth are intra-personal traits that some studies have associated with riskier driving or crashes, such as sensation seeking (heightened among teenagers) and behavior disorders.
The experience needed to point the car down the road, keep it going straight, and stop it is acquired fairly quickly. What takes longer is the rational thought process needed to make wise decisions, as opposed to the exciting or fun ones that they tend to be more inclined to make.
A friend of mine that lived in rural Tennessee was granted a drivers license at 14 so he could make his way to school. The county he lived in didn’t want to send a bus that far out into nowhere. So, every day he would drive himself to and from school.
Also, I don’t know how I would have made it to class everyday if I didn’t have a car at 16. Hell, my parents had to drive me to my classes for the first year of college….
“I’m against raising the driving age to 18. It should be raised to 21.”
By that logic my parents would still be driving me to school and work. That would be awesome.
/sarcasm
There’s been a lot of talk recently about the efficacy of graduated licenses–what you can do with a car when you’re 16, 17, 18, in terms of who you can carry, what hours of the day you can drive how far you can go. God knows it would be impossible to enforce, since the police can’t even seem to be able to ticket cellphone users, but some variation on that would seem better than simply raising the driving age.
In fact, lower the age, but with horsepower, passenger and time-of-day provisos.
I learned to “drive” at 12, on a Farmall tractor. At 14, I graduated (illegally) to my friend Billy Zeitlin’s ’48 Jeep, and I vividly remember inadvertently passing my mother on a back road in it one afternoon. She took me straight to the New York State Police, turned me in, they yelled at me a lot (I assume that was the deal my mother struck), and I slowly worked my way up the car chain until by damn I owned my very own 1936 Ford.
Worked for me, I’m still alive.
As for the effectiveness of driver training, my daughter’s was Skip Barber, her 18th birthday present (both the road-driving and competition courses). Her 16th-birthday present was a new twin-cam Neon Sport Coupe–the essence of spoil-your-daughter excessiveness, right?
Wrong. I told her she was welcome to date the guy with the Camaro, date the guy with the Mustang, but she was driving, they were riding. In her Neon, like it or not. Worked for her.
Heck no. My best driving memories are from when I was 16 and 17.
Adrian: I find it hard to believe that more rigorous driver education and requirements would have that effect, but I would be interested to read a published study saying otherwise. How would that allow more drivers on the road given the already lax requirements currently in place? I’ve never heard of anyone kept off the road because they couldn’t eventually pass the current exam.
I agree that behavioral issues are the root of the problem, but believe me those tendencies are still there when you’re 18. I know because I’m not that much older. Unless you’re going to raise the age to 25, which would be impossible, you’re just sending kids into the world with less experience and the same behavior.
Raising the age to 18 would be an improvement.
1. We’ve come to understand that the teen brain isn’t really ready for a lot of responsbility earlier.
2. In my experience, most kids who get a job to get a car find their paycheck consumed by the car. While the work experience is probably somewhat valuable, overall it seems like a pointless exercise.
However, our lifestyle works against us. There’s damned little public transportation to pick up the slack. Parents DO employ their children as chauffeurs (how smart is that?) and by the time the kid is age 16, they consider it a bonus that he can at least drive himself. Sprawl dicates that we go nowhere without wheels.
As regards the situation at the school, the transportation department staffs as though the kids don’t drive themselves; otherwise the bus routes would take forever (they’re long as it is).
As regards the “nanny state” not letting the “young’uns” do what we did, at my high school cars were the exception, not the rule. If we take the kids cars away, they’ll be doing exactly what I did as a kid, taking the bus, riding a bicycle and working on improvising transportation where those don’t satisfy.
And it’s not the nanny state coddling the kids, it’s the parents. Over half the local elementary school arrives by car because Suzie Suburb won’t risk her child’s life on a perfectly safe bus (but, as noted, she will later employ her 16-year old as a chauffeur; this is one of the reasons for monster SUVs).
Children that could *walk* arrive by car.
Biking to the mall is out of the question.
Around here, they don’t even get unstructured play; the afternoons are arranged. When I was a kid, you were allowed in the house for 10 minutes after school to eat a snack and, unless the tornado sirens were wailing, you were expected to go outside and play. You can’t learn to settle your own disputes if there’s always a coach around (to confer favor on his own kid and a few select others) taking the matter out of your hands.
KixStart: And it’s not the nanny state coddling the kids, it’s the parents. Over half the local elementary school arrives by car because Suzie Suburb won’t risk her child’s life on a perfectly safe bus
Amen. When I went to elementary school in the late 70s, early 80s, kids walked or took the public bus (or the school bus in my one year at a rural school). Now everyone is so damn afraid of the bogeyman that there is a traffic jam in front of every elementary school in the city at 8:45 and 3:00 every day.
I generally like our graduated licensing system in BC. You can get still get a learner’s permit at 16, but for a minimum of one year you need to drive with a supervisor, and with substantial restrictions. After a year, you can take a road test and enter the “novice” phase where you no longer need a supervisor, but you can’t drive with more than one passenger (two if one is a 25+year old supervisor) and a couple other restrictions (e.g. zero blood alcohol tolerance). The novice period is a minimum of 24 months, but you can reduce it by six months by taking a recognized driver training course. (We don’t have any kind of driver’s ed in high school in Canada – that is uniquely American I think). This licensing scheme applies to all new drivers, regardless of age.
But as rtz said, many of my best car-related experiences were as a 16-18 year old. Unfortunately, too many of them were near-brushes with death! Of course, driving a clapped-out, 15 year-old Chevelle with a 350, purchased for $450 will yield a few such experiences! (Who says having a car needs to be expensive? I had that car for three years, put nothing but gas in it – ok, lots of gas – and sold it for $300.)
{Aside – please make the comment entry box bigger. It is so hard to keep your thoughts coherent when you can only see five lines of text.}
At my high school there were maybe 8-10 parking spaces available for students. This was a school with over 1200 kids in it. You walked or took the bus to school. Nobody drove their kids, and even with a car I rarely drove myself.
Sounds good in theory, unfortunately it won’t work in the real world.
True, kids won’t like this idea, but parents will like it even less. Most parents can hardly wait for the kids to start driving so they can finally hang up their chauffeur hat. In my case, I was expected to chauffeur a younger sibling, as well as an older relative who could no longer drive because of a medical condition.
Except for NYC, mass transit in the USA is a sad joke. Besides, how many parents would want their nubile young daughters on the bus with illegal aliens and winos?
Good discussion so far, thanks everyone. To go back to a few of the earlier points:
PerfectZero: I find it hard to believe that more rigorous driver education and requirements would have that effect, but I would be interested to read a published study saying otherwise.
The research indicates that increased access to driver training increases the number of young drivers who are able to get a license. (The availability of driver training increases the number of young people who qualify to get a license and increases their passing rates.) The belief isn’t that the driver training causes the accidents, but that the increased number of licensed drivers in that age group adds to the number of drivers who can get into accidents in the first place. The accident rate remains similar, but with more drivers on the road, you end up with a greater number of accidents.
Tomb Z: Kids need to take more responsibility earlier. It’s a bad idea to be so overly protective.
What is the price of their “need for responsibility” when it kills off thousands of other people, some of whom were presumably already responsible grown ups with spouses and families and kids of their own?
The question that we need to ask ourselves as a society is whether the death toll created by young people driven by hormones and peer pressure is acceptable or not. Obviously, we tolerate some casualty rate on our highways — a fatality rate of zero would be impossible to achieve — but there is some line that shouldn’t be crossed. Maybe we’ve drawn it in the wrong place.
rtz: My best driving memories are from when I was 16 and 17.
Some of mine are, too. And I, too, managed to get through my teen years with a beater, without recreating the fatal scene from Rebel Without a Cause. It’s just clear from the data that other kids aren’t quite so lucky, and they manage to take quite a few other people down with them.
When I took my first Accident Avoidance Course at Summit Point Race Track in West Virginia, I noticed that my 17-year old daughter drove cautiously while the teenage boys in our class drove hard and fast. (Most of the students that Saturday were dads with their offspring.) I do favor making 18 years of age the minimum age for a driver’s license as well as requiring instruction at a school with a wet skid pad.
In my experience, most kids who get a job to get a car find their paycheck consumed by the car. While the work experience is probably somewhat valuable, overall it seems like a pointless exercise.
Yeah, it is pointless, except for learning how to be responsible for your own schedule and earn your own way by working for it yourself.
Completely pointless…
How are younger people going to learn if the driving age is raised? I think it is a further disgusting attempt to discredit younger people and their abilities. As is common, I think that it is a small minority sppoiling it for the rest.
You dont need to talk about after-school jobs.
many 17 year olds have full time jobs, and surely restricting their driving is restricting them from certain jobs? i can only see this as highly unfair and ludacrously un-thought through