While allowing children as young as 15 years old to drive is not the worst idea we’ve had, it registers fairly high on the stupid meter. It also happens to be a problem we can do something about without too much difficulty, if we choose to do so.
When 8-year-old Vaclav Hajek was struck by a car and killed on Bailey Hill Road in 2007, I was teaching at nearby Kennedy Middle School, where the 16-year-old driver previously had attended. According to police reports, a woman had stopped her car to allow Vaclav to cross when the teen driver accelerated around her and struck Vaclav. The vehicle was traveling at an estimated 65 mph in a 35 mph zone and left a 211-foot-long skid mark.
In the days following, I heard nothing but good things about the young driver from Kennedy staffers. By all accounts he seemed to be a bright, upstanding young man. Like most 16-year-olds, Shawn Tichenor simply was not mature enough to be behind the wheel. While Shawn carries some responsibility, so does the society which entrusted a child with a privilege that should be granted only to adults.
As an avid cyclist, I regularly witness irresponsible, dangerous, teen driving up close. When I spot speeders or other aggressive driving, the person behind the wheel is almost always a very young driver.
According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, “The rate of crashes, fatal and nonfatal, per mile driven for 16-year-old drivers is almost 10 times the rate for drivers ages 30 to 59.” Traffic accidents are the leading killer of American teens — approximately one dead youngster every three days.
The benefits of an increase in the driving age far outweigh the drawbacks. Fewer teen drivers means safer roadways, reduced pollution and greenhouse gases, lower insurance premiums, less traffic, greater use of alternative transportation, increased cardiovascular activity, better health and reduced parental stress.
Increasing the driving age potentially could be explosive for Oregon’s biking culture. Without the option to drive, many young people would drift to cycling — possibly getting hooked for life. The roadways would be safer and more appealing with fewer immature drivers, and the community would have more incentive to make the roads safer for biking with more teens behind the handlebars.
With all of the ecological benefits, this would be a smart measure for environmental groups to help bring to the ballot if our elected officials won’t legislate an age increase. One of the primary opposition groups, fortunately, isn’t of legal voting age.
New Jersey is leading the way with the highest minimum licensing age in the country. At age 16, one is allowed to start taking driving lessons. At age 17, they can take the test for a restricted driver’s license as long as they have completed six hours of behind-the-wheel supervised driving. At 18, a full driver’s license is received.
In Oregon, at age 15 one is eligible for an “instruction permit,” which allows you to drive with a licensed driver who is at least 21 and has had his or her license for at least three years. At age 16 they’re eligible for their license. Before being awarded their license, they have to complete 50 hours of “supervised driving” at an Oregon Department of Transportation-approved driver education course or 100 hours with a parent or guardian. (I could have talked my mother into signing off on 100 hours in a matter of minutes). They also have to pass an electronic “Safe Driving Practices Test” as well as a “behind the wheel” driving test.
Most teens have the ability to drive a vehicle and pass an electronic test; it’s maturity they’re lacking. This is much less about hours spent on the road and much more about hours spent alive. Driving to school or “supervised driving” simply doesn’t produce the responsibility required for driving.
We have decided that one must be 18 to go to war and to vote, age 21 before drinking a beer, but we stupidly permit children as young as 15 to drive what equate to enormous metal battering rams. Expecting children as young as 15 to drive responsibly is a little like expecting them to be abstinent. You can ask Sarah Palin how that strategy worked out.
Allowing children to drive may make sense for the insurance industry and car companies, but it makes little sense for public safety.
Driving should be for adults only.
[This editorial first appeared in the Eugene Register Guard]
The insurance industry may generate more revenue from young drivers, but the payouts are a lot higher too. The industry would be more than okay with young drivers being taken off the roads, I assure you.
When my daughter was 18 or so, we happened to have a Murcielago on loan for a magazine test. I let her drive it to town, me in the right seat, because I routinely let her drive at some point any test car we had, for the experience. (Today she’s 30 and shares a 911 track car with me, and as a kid she’d driven Ferraris, Vipers, Callaways, 911 Turbos, Lotuses and the like.)
There’s a military school in our small town–Donald Trump’s an alum–and there were a bunch of young students in their African-dictator uniforms at the mall when we pulled in. They of course went crazy when they saw the Lamborghini, but not quite as crazy as when the left door scissored up and an extremely attractive blonde climbed out.
I would feel much better if they made the drinking age 16 and the driving age 21. It would make more sense on a lot of levels. The purpose of the uber-idiotic drinking age was to reduce drunk driving right? So why not just stop teenagers from driving but let them drink if that’s the goal?
Of course I’d really prefer to just have everything at 18.
Fake. @ 0.48s the zoom is reset. An adult probably got in the car.
For a lot of teenagers, getting their first car is the first big step into maturity and the adult world. Yes, a license comes with a lot of responsibility and risk along with the freedom it provides, but at some point in a person’s life responsibility and risk have to be addressed.
Someone isn’t inherently mature or immature just because they happen to be 16, or even 18 years old. Our life experiences teach us maturity and how to deal with the various situations that life throws at us. Going back one or two hundred years ago the average 16 year old has more responsibilities than many mid 20-somethings today. If there is a problem with teen drivers, it needs to be addressed with education and expectations from the parents and authority figures teaching them how to deal with the newfound freedoms, not by simply be delaying the exposure for another couple years.
Who was that girl who stole her dad’s porsche and SMASHED HER HEAD on a toll booth plaza?
Did you know that 100% of driving related deaths occur while people were driving? Maybe we should outlaw all driving. It’s not like people actually have a need to get somewhere.
In most parts of the United States, public transportation doesn’t exist. You need a car to get anywhere. At age 18, many people have a strong need to drive long distances for work or school. Is this the time you want somebody to learn to drive? When I was 18, I had to drive an average of 50 miles a day to get to and from a class. On the days that I had a class in the morning, and at night, that was 100 miles. Do you think my parents would have been very excited to let me “learn” to drive at that age, while they would have to drive me to school? I don’t think you would volunteer your time in a similar manor, Mr. Welch.
OH YES…. Nikki Catsouras
http://www.welcometowallyworld.com/nikki-catsouras-car-crash-phot/
This video brought back memories.
People say 15 or 16 is not a big jump from 18 but at that age, a year or two represents a huge mental growth. The younger you go, the exponentially less mature you are.
I had a license @ 17 in Canada, I would have disagreed then but looking back, I should have probably got it a year or two later. The things I’ve done, the things I saw my friends do behind the wheel in highschool, the incident above comes as no surprise to me…
Driver training is so so lacking which doesn’t help. In any industry, dealing with 3000+lbs of machinery requires a lot of training…but here we are in our metal rockets, barely taught how to properly merge onto a highway…
Here in Finland you get to drive mopeds, tractors and 45 km/h limited light vehicles at 15, 125cc motorcycles at 16, and finally cars at 18. That way we get rid of the worst drivers without too much collateral damage.
Around where I live, I’m a lot more afraid of those aged 70+ in Cadillacs and Grand Marquis that no longer have their mental and physical facilities about them.
If that girl can actually drive a Countach, I’m impressed. From everything I’ve heard, the clutch and shifter are set in concrete.
@Flashpoint
That sucks! Poor Porsche! As an 18 year old, I have no mercy for dumb kids, they give the rest of us a bad name.
LDMAN1 :
Fake. @ 0.48s the zoom is reset. An adult probably got in the car.
I too think it’s movie magic.
There are two little video “blips”, one at 0:59 seconds and another one at 1:50. She didn’t drive the car.
This is one hot topic. The key point is maturity and knowledge to determine what defines a good driver. Setting one age to be able to legally drive any vehicle is a pretty simplistic way of handling things.
How about the notion of having “kids” be able to drive go-karts and minibikes at a younger age to learn basic driving dynamics? I know it helped me greatly to be able to do this along with operating tractors and trucks on the farm(s) prior to a street permit age of 14 and then a full license at 16.
How about the another option such as Europe where size and horsepower are eligible within licensing classes and one needs to have time and proof of being able to handle it. I’m particularly fond of this when it comes to motorcycles. Couldn’t this concept apply to cars based on curb weight, horsepower and/or engine size?
In the end, it all boils down to individual responsibility and this is a learned behaviour. Is starting to learn at age 18 really going to be better than starting at age 14 or 16? Should the “kids” get trophies and ribbons for waiting and then showing up to get their license at an advanced age?
What is wrong with enabling individuals the ability to “earn” their right to drive based upon learned ability and demonstrated performance?
Hot topic indeed.
Good driving habits start at home. Over the past 7 days alone I have not done much more driving than I usually do, but in a mix of interstate/suburban/urban driving, I have seen some terrible, inconsiderate, and very unsafe drivers out there. Of the cars where I could see who was driving, it was always a middle-aged adult. If you want your kids to drive safe, maybe you old geezers could use your blinkers, stay in your lane, turn off your cellphones and keep your eyes on the road once in a while. Perhaps we should kill two birds with one stone: pass laws on limiting driver’s licenses to people whose parents have clean driving records.
ajla :
Around where I live, I’m a lot more afraid of those aged 70+ in Cadillacs and Grand Marquis that no longer have their mental and physical facilities about them.
It’s not just the elderly. Road dangers are posed by anybody who’s not physically fit enough to turn their head and body, react quickly or move their arms or legs in time to respond to road, weather, or traffic conditions.
This can include anybody who just hasn’t the mental capacity to handle a car, slow reaction times by nature, is very sick, morbidly obese, generally unhealthy, drunk, or simply just taking a decongestant or one of many types of medications.
Many people just should not be allowed to drive because they are unfit to drive, either mentally or physically.
The piece is a bit sloppy, but the author is correct.
Most teenagers lack the self-control and fear of death necessary to drive. The statistics bear it out; inexperienced teen drivers have more crashes than do inexperienced, older drivers. Age is an important factor.
How about the notion of having “kids” be able to drive go-karts and minibikes at a younger age to learn basic driving dynamics?
This can’t be fixed with training. The issue isn’t with skills or a lack thereof, but with emotions and hormones.
Raising the driving age to 18 and instituting a learner’s placard and provisional licensing requirements for new drivers during the first 1-2 years would help.
Driving on the street is not so much a technical skill as it is a social one. Better driving comes from being considerate of one’s neighbors, not from pulling a good skidpad figure. The track is an entirely different place, and what works in one place won’t necessarily work in the other.
I’m hearing this argument more and more these days. Here in Connecticut it is a hot-button issue after a couple high profile fatal accidents a couple years ago.
My question is, what has changed in the 23 years since I got my license at 16 years and 1 month, which is what the law was in Connecticut at the time? Is it that kids aren’t as responsible as we were then? Or is it that the average car is more accessible and has a higher level of performance than what was available in 1986?
@LDMAN1 :
Definitely a fake. The girl who gets in the driver’s side doesn’t completely latch the door, but at the 58 second (or so) mark when you see the stutter the door is suddenly fully latched.
While I think that switching more people, teens and adults, from cars to bicycles would be a positive move, the rest of us as drivers are going to have to do a helluva lot better job of sharing the road with bikes that we do now or we’re just going to shift the tragic events to a different mode. And if kids can’t or won’t exercise good judgement in a car, they’ll do little better on a bike. It will just reduce the collateral damage they can cause.
I think that the most effective step to take would be to require that teen drivers be limited to driving vehicles accompanied by an adult or equiped with an auotmotive ‘black box’ that contains an accelerometer and a recorder to monitor their driving behavior. While neither would guarantee that the teen did not make any bone headed moves, it would keep a lot of teens on the straight and narrow knowing that they’re being evaluated. As better decision making skills develop with age (hopefully), these restrictions would be relaxed. However, the old saying holds true: Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
Bicyclists are the worst pests on the roads, they cause times more mayhem than teen drivers. Let’s ban bicyclists from throrughfares. It will do wonders for public safery.
BTW, I drove 5-ton truck with pneumatic brakes when I was 14, and nothing bad happened (admittedly it had a 150hp petrol engine).
I agree with most everything in the article except one thing: “reduced pollution and greenhouse gases.” As the parent of a teen girl I can tell you we spend more time driving her around than if she drove herself. Example: she wants to go to the mall. We drive her there, drop her off, then we come home. When she calls a few hours later, we drive there, pick her up, then drive home. Twice as much gas burned, twice as much greenhouse gases released.
Now, I know what you’re thinking: if we let her drive herself, she will drive around for fun and put even more miles on the car. Uh, no she won’t because we would give her x miles a week she is allowed to drive.
To all readers and posters:
There may actually be an organized effort to increase the driving age in Oregon. Anyone who may be interested in supporting something like this in some way shape or form, even something as minimal as signing a petition, please e-mail me @ joshuawelch@comcast.net.
Also, anyone who may have helpful advice, ideas, insight etc, for a campaign such as this, please e-mail me.
Thanks,
Joshua Welch
I have a different perspective in that, while the teenage years certainly contain a lot of logically-challenged behavior, many beginning drivers are in accidents because of inexperience as much as anything else. We can raise the driving age to 21, even 30, but then we’ll just see 21 or 30 year old drivers not quite grasping everything about driving and paying attention to their surroundings and causing accidents. I’m typically driving around Midnight every night and see a lot of idiocy by adults.
I say this because I partly grew up in a rural area, where I–like many children–learned to operate vehicles about as soon as I could reach the pedals. Long before I was 16, I had driven tractors, motorcycles and cars or trucks over fields. By the time the state allowed me to legally drive on roads, I was already a fairly experienced driver, as were many of my classmates. We all still did the occasional, stupid thing, but we were also more capable of escaping tragedy when we did.
Edit/add: There seemed to be more limits to our stupid behavior, as well. Growing up around machinery also teaches you that the things can quite easily kill you, especially when mishandled.
Also, to answer Jimal’s question: I’m not sure. There seems to be more irresponsibility, but when I was 16, we weren’t trying to make impressive videos. There may also be a false sense of security with current safety features. If I would have smashed my first car into anything at even a moderate speed , I would have died.
Cyclists who frequently(usually) refuse to obey stop signs and traffic lights are quite a similar problem. Should they be restricted also?
Here in South Australia, I belive we have the most draconian learner requirements in the country.
And yet we still get young kids getting killed on “P” plates. The reason? Most authorites are only interested in getting people to pass the driving test, not learning to drive. In fact we had the stupid situation of politicians knocking advanced driver courses because they would encourage “anti-social” driving, not withstanding that these drivers would be more skilled than the average dickhead on the roads.
Lay the blame at wimpy, limp wristed politicians who see advantages in getting people to drive, to cover the non existant public transport.
My daughter did not learn to drive until she was 19. This was not a problem because she went to a boarding high school where she couldn’t have a car anyway, and when she was home, we were then living in a large city with good public transit. The problem, of course, is a lot of kids don’t grow up in that sort of setting. Families with kids move out to distant suburban and exurban developments for the well-funded school districts. The kids’ friends aren’t within walking distance. Going to a movie or getting ice cream involves traversing very bicycle-unfriendly multi-lane arteries to get to a mall or strip center. If we want to get teenagers completely out of the driver’s seat, we need to chang a lot about the way we live.
tbp, I hear you completely, because I also grew up in a rural area, and as soon as I was tall enough to reach the pedals, I got assigned the task of mowing the lawn with the tractor. Manual gearbox was a non-issue by the time I got to driving age because I’d already done it with tractors (and drove the car in the field). And the tractor wasn’t fast enough to get in really serious trouble, although one still had to think ahead about what one was doing on steep grades, so it taught responsibility.
Of course I’d really prefer to just have everything at 18.
You must be young. I lean heavily towards 27 as the age of majority.
Someone isn’t inherently mature or immature just because they happen to be 16,
Perhaps not on Romulus 5, but here on earth I’m afraid that 16 year olds are, inherently, immature.
Do we have any stats on first-year 16-year-old drivers versus first-year 17- or 18-year-old drivers that aren’t self-selected? I’d have been a better driver at 14 than I am now ten years later – fewer worries, fewer distractions, less understanding of just how hard I can push…
We were lucky in that when our daughter was in her teens we had a large number of nearly unused gravel roads half a mile from the house. So, starting at twelve or so, the daughter got to drive the car, a 5-speed Accord, a little bit now and then, with me in the passenger seat. Gradually we increased her time behind the wheel, until when she was fifteen she got to drive about twenty miles on a gravel backroad in the mountains west of here. By the time she was sixteen and started her driving instruction in high school she was already familiar with the mechanical processes of driving, and just needed to learn how to interact with other drivers in traffic. This insured that getting her driver’s license wouldn’t be this all-consuming longing that seemed to be the case with many of her friends. After she got her license her first trip was across Puget Sound on a ferry to see a friend of hers in Edmonds, then driving back through Seattle and Tacoma. But I must say that she was fairly mature for her age, and was driving an ambulance as an EMT when she was 21.
As a 19 year old who has made plenty of mistakes driving, I agree with those that think raising the driving age would only raise the age that most accidents occur at.
The concept of driving a car with a reasonable level of competence is not difficult, however having the maturity to do so responsibly cannot be learned by taking any class. It is a mentality that some (most) kids choose not to adopt. I have several friends that I refuse to let drive me anywhere because they are so careless. I also have friends whose driving responsibility I have full faith in.
I agree with Mr. Welch and would add that our driver training and testing regimen in the US should look a whole lot more like Germany’s.
While Shawn carries some responsibility . . .
Some? Passing a stopped car at 65 mph in a 35 mph zone is ridiculously irresponsible, even for a 16-year-old. I feared the consequences of that sort of behavior at 16 far more than I do now that I’m not under any supervision other than the government, who would not severely punish me for that. Personally, I think we need some real consequences for the effects of our actions on the road. So I guess I’ll agree that he isn’t entirely responsible, since he knew he could do something like this without much consequence.
rmwill : Cyclists who frequently(usually) refuse to obey stop signs and traffic lights are quite a similar problem. Should they be restricted also?
Yeah, I bet they’ve killed a lot of pedestrians, motorists, and other cyclists.
I would visit grandparents who lived in Oklahoma every year when growing up. I was driven around quite frequently by a neighbor’s kid who was 12 when he started driving. He used to drive us all over by himself in his daddy’s truck, no problems. We also used to ride dirt bikes, drive tractors, etc. Same grandfather taught me to shoot a rifle at the age of 6. I believe the more responsibility and trust you give a child, the more responsible and trustworthy they will be. I don’t know if you can legislate that sort of thing. Anecdotal evidence means nothing, and statistics are easily manipulated. For instance even with stats, how can you say whether the age of the driver or the lack of decent driver training is the problem? When you move up the age does the amount of accidents per age of driver move up as well? You certainly can’t use New Jersey as an example of what to do. Worst drivers in the world come from New Jersey.
I agree with tbp that it is mainly the inexperience of 16 year old drivers rather than lack of maturity that leads to the number of accidents. I am sure there are some immature drivers out there, and that they do indeed cause some accidents and deaths, but I’d also like to see the statistics on drivers starting at 16 vs 17 or 18 as far as how many accidents are caused.
That being said, even if it is safer for everyone for the driving age to be raised, where do we draw the line? The pre-college teenage years are a time to begin to experiment with freedom and really come into your own as a person. Having the mobility that a license provides is essential for that process. I’m sure we all have great memories of things cars allowed us to do back when we were 16/17, and while some of those memories might have included some hoonery, do we want to deny our children those experiences?
Sure insurance costs would be lower and there might be less deaths due to traffic accidents, but we could save a whole lot more on health insurance and save 10x as many lives if we just outlawed smoking and drinking completely – but I wouldn’t want to live in a country like that, no matter how cheap the insurance or how many people got to live an extra few decades.
In the end, every freedom carries with it a certain amount of risk. The greatest threat to our personal freedoms in the last twenty years has been the encroachment of the nanny state that doesn’t think we as a people are smart enough to take the risks into account for the actions of ourselves and others. I’d like to see the DWI limit increased back to .15 so it would be possible to go out and have a few beers with some friends without having to worry about taking a cab home and then back to pick up your car in the morning or worrying about a cop staking out next to the bar parking lot. I’d like to be able to drive at ridiculous speeds on an empty stretch of road without worrying about a speed camera or a radar-cop sniping from behind a billboard. I realize that either of those situations will bring with them added risk, and I am fine with that, as I have a feeling a lot of other people would be too. Our biggest problem as a nation is that we buy into the hysteria of the paranoid and outraged minorities on a number of issues, and never really see what we are giving up by adding out names to campaigns that could potentially save lives. Everybody dies sometime, and whether I meet my maker due to old age at 90, a heart attack at 50, or a distracted driver next week, the net result is the same, and I won’t be in much of a position to complain about it, so why worry?
A learning permit at 15 is actually a good idea. Getting more time behind the wheel with an experienced driver at their side is a good thing. The more hours they get, the better. Learners permit at 15, junior license (passengers limited to licensed drivers and siblings) at 16 1/2, full license at 17 1/2 or older. Require some serious hours behind the wheel before they are turned loose.
At the other end of the age scale, they need to test drivers over 80 before renewing their licenses. We’ve had several deaths and injuries in my area caused by elderly drivers.
Kids need to learn how to be responsible at some point. Part of the problems we have in the US can be traced to the micromanaging of children that leave them unable to cope as adults.
Bad driving isn’t just for kids and old people. I followed a middle aged woman driving an old Ford Escort wagon onto the highway this morning. She was completely incapable of speaking with her passenger without looking at him. She must have turned her head towards him 20 times while I was behind her. BTW, she got all the way up to 45 mph when she got to merge onto the highway, with me stuck behind her..
I knew it was fake, because if she was actually driving she would have been texting on a black berry at the same time.
The statistics I’ve seen seem to show that the safest age to give men a driver’s license is 25. Women are fine at 16.
Jacksonbart, you are correct!
One thing I don’t understand is we think a 12-15 year old isn’t mature enough to drive, but is mature enough to be charged as an adult in a crime.
No body should get off or get a short sentence, but they do deserve at that age to be locked away for life and the key thrown away.
Most teenagers lack the self-control and fear of death necessary to drive. The statistics bear it out; inexperienced teen drivers have more crashes than do inexperienced, older drivers. Age is an important factor.
This can’t be fixed with training. The issue isn’t with skills or a lack thereof, but with emotions and hormones.
Raising the driving age to 18 and instituting a learner’s placard and provisional licensing requirements for new drivers during the first 1-2 years would help.
Age is a factor, but so is experience.
The only study I’m familiar with that compared experience and age is the study by the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute from 1995. That study contains a lot of comments indicating that the author either doesn’t understand the concept of selection bias or isn’t comfortable discussing it in ways that would make it clear. He straightforwardly argues that people who are 23 to 25 are more unsafe drivers with two years of experience than with one, for example, since that’s what the data shows. It’s actually quite likely that the population that the populations of drivers are quite different.
In any case, if you actually believe that study and that safety trumps all (and thus give no value to freedom or enjoyment), then you should be agitating for raising the driving age not to 18, but to at least 23, which is were the one-year-experience accident rate started to level out. The study found that a 18 year old driver with two years of experience driving had an accident rate the same as a 22 year old driver with one year of experience.
Of course, at the same time you should want to restrict all sorts of other dangerous freedoms as well to be consistent.
Provisional licensing requirements are fine, but some people have to drive because of work at age 18. While driving at age 18 is more dangerous than driving at age 23 with the same amount of experience, people at age 18 (or 21, or 23) may not have a choice about having to drive a significant number of miles to work or otherwise. However, someone who is a minor will have a much better ability to drive supervised and in controlled conditions than someone who has reached the age of majority.
I have some videos of our cats playing pianos (Steinways) I wanna’ upload if anyone is interested.
I have mixed feelings about this, or I would if it weren’t for all the electronics kids like to operate while they are driving. Just yesterday I yelled at some kid (of maybe 20) for texting while driving (to his credit, he seemed genuinely embarrassed and chastened. I wish our society could find a way to let the kids drive, but come down hard on them any time they might drive irresponsibly. The problem is, I don’t think people are much more responsible in their low 20s.
I also think some kids are a lot more responsible than others. My brother and I were very responsible drivers, and my parents let me drive across the country when I was 17. My brother’s son was totally trustworthy with a car as a teenager, and his daughter probably was, too.
OF COURSE the video is fake. But the Lambo ‘looks’ real.
I really don’t care about Mr Welch’s “biking culture”. You are the ones that insist on riding bikes down busy roadways that were built and intended for cars. You are making a choice and taking your safety into your own hands. Every form of transportation has its pros and cons. Bicycling may be healthy exercise and I’m sure it makes Oregon hippies feel all warm and fuzzy about helping the environment, but the trade-off is you have no protection at all from any vehicular impact. Whether the car is being driven by a sixteen-year-old or a sixty-year-old.
It seems every day in my local news paper, a kid loses control of his hot hatch and kills himself and others.
It ALWAYS seems to be a kid under 22 years old.
I would have thought it an obvious solution….. a Learner license from 18 to 21 that allows the holder to drive only cars with GPS restrictors implemented that constantly restrict driving speeds to below legal limits. ( I am sure would be easy to do technically)
This would FOR SURE save thousands of lives.
If the aim here is to stop kids (and bystanders) dying but keeping everyones mobility, this is obvious surely? Civil Rights be damned, if you are going over these speeds you are breaking the law anyway, so if you drive within the law, you should not even notice you have a restrictor in place !!
I would like the option too actually, as I am sick of speed cameras flashing me for an accidental 2km/h ($40) fractional passing of a speed limit! I reckon, if I could switch this on, I would save myself $200 a year and it would be just sooooo much more relaxing not having to keep checking your speed all the time.
If this was even a voluntary option, I am sure many kids would opt for it as it would SURELY mean way lower insurance premiums just for starters ???
Maybe not a perfect solution, but it would definitely save a few lives. Shawn here would have only been doing 34 if this system was implemented for example.
Sutsuki, you are correct in assuming that most of the reported accidents you will read about in newspapers are of under 22s – they make good reading, without necessarily being statistically representative.
Equally, increasing the driving age seems intuitively appealing, even if it is largely wrong. In a fairly comprehensive study on the subject (admittedly it is for motorcycles, not cars, but the same principles apply – to be found in the following book: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Markenmanagement-Motorradindustrie-Grundlagen-Erfolgsstrategien-Hersteller/dp/3409142576/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1257156088&sr=1-1) the findings from doing longitudinal controlled experiments are rather different. For motorcycles, at least, the optimal age to start teaching kids to ride them is between 5 and 6, not over 20. That way they will have learned to control the machine perfectly, they tend to be massively more responsible driving and the accidents that happen from inexperience happen at such low speeds that the general risk to the riders is very low. Once they get to be teens they have a perfect understanding of the consequences and demonstrably do not engage in behaviour we normally associate with teen drivers. One additional conclusion is that people who only start driving at the age of 30 or later will inherently always be more dangerous, since they are physiologically much less able to acquire the fine motoric skills needed to operate a motorcycle well enough.
It’s an easy mistake to make – teens appear irresponsible and incapable to older people, so increasing the driving age seems like the logical – if totally mistaken direction.
Driver training of a much higher standard is the answer and no, often just having an adult in the car will not do. Proper dual control cars are necessary if the training is to be done on public roads for a start. On top of that driver training is not all about holding a slide and maximising speed, much of it is about responsibility and it demonstrates very convincingly – and in a safe environment what the loss of control really means. In countries where some driver training has been made compulsory for getting a full licence, after the provisional licence was acquired, the accident rates involving teen drivers dropped statistically significantly.
As several people here have mentioned one of the problems is for teens not to have the judgement of what will happen if they overstep their capability, in all situations, be it dry road, rain, ice, etc. Driver training, if done appropriately, will teach you that.
I agree that, for boys at least, the issue is not learning how to control the vehicle but rather learning to control the driver. There’s a curve on Spout Run Parkway as it splits off from the George Washington Parkway that I negotiated at 70 mph in my dad’s 1963 Chevrolet sedan, on lovely bias-ply tires with the little zig-zag siping . . . in 1966, when I was 17 years old. The speed limit was 40 (now 35), and I’m still amazed when I drive that curve, 43 years later. I was rat-racing some other fool (won!). I was also stone-cold sober.
So, I’m not sure that boys shouldn’t wait until they’re 18 or 19 to be allowed to drive a car. Girls are a different matter, although get any teen-ager tanked up on alcohol and you have a problem . . . just as you have with an adult.
There is a downside, however, that I experienced as a parent of 3 girls/women, all of whom are now over 18. For a variety of reasons, my oldest daughter did not really get much driving experience (or a license) at home — we moved into the city when she was 15; she went to boarding school for her senior year; and she was a year young for her grade (i.e. graduated high school at 17). After a “gap year” of living in NYC and working, she went to college at USC in Los Angeles. Then, she wanted a car. Unlike her two younger sisters, for whatever reason, she was/is just not a particularly competent driver. Had she been home with us she could have had more supervised driving, which would have been useful. As it was, she totaled her car on the Pasadena freeway, somehow managing not to run into anyone else or injure herself.
So, not allowing young people to drive until they are likely living away from home in college or at a job has its problems, too.
I think the great state of Tennessee had a wise approach, back in the day when I first took to the road motorized. A restricted license was available at a young age, 15 if I recall, with one big limitation. It was only for a motorcycle under 60cc displacement. I had a Harley Davidson that fit that description. It was a badge-engineered Italian moped without pedals. I don’t remember if it was measured in horse power or sled dog units, but you did mix oil with the gas, and shifted three-on-the-handlebars. It was a step up from my Briggs & Stratton mini-bike, but nothing about that orange pseudo-hog would overpower a young man’s ego. I learned to drive humbly and cautiously. If you survived six months on a slow cycle, you were ready to try a real car.
IMHO people should work up, starting with bicycles:
* Bicycle/street license at 13-14 (or whatever age your municipality says you have to ride in the street)
* scooter/motorcycle license @ 16, not to exceed 10hp
* real motorcycle license (not to exceed 30-35hp) at 18
* compact car license (not greater than some arbitrary weight, and not greater than 120hp) @ 21. Motorcycle license no greater than 50-60hp.
* Middle/large sedan license at 24, unrestricted motorcycle license.
* SUV license at 27.
Any 3 violations or two accidents in which you were at fault, in a year, knocks you down a license class for 1 year. If you only have one car/vehicle, the state can hand you some sort of black box to install to monitor/restrict driving in some to-be-determined way.
The only downside I see to this (and @sutuski) as well is if you drive on the highway here and you are going to less than 65 in a 55, there is a good chance someone is going to hit you.
I think Robstar has come up with a reasonable progression for getting people into more powerful and heavier vehicles. It seems to me that each step should also include training in each new vehicle in the same way that we would train someone who was operating heavy machinery or aircraft. No one would let a low-hours pilot who learned to fly a Cessna 150 into a 747 or F16 just because they had a pilot’s license, but any moron with a driving license can get into a 6000 lb SUV, 180 mph superbike or 500 hp Corvette.
Sadly, the bottom line is that so long as people are operating equipment which will exceed walking speed, they’re going to crash and injure themselves and others. Don’t forget, however, that falls in the U.S. (involving no machinery whatsoever) kill about 16,000 people a year. At least when you fall, you’re only taking yourself out.
Robstar’s idea has some merit, but should exclude motorcycles and mopeds. Not only does it exceed the danger threshold for many parents, but it is a bitch to drive a moped when it’s snowing.
Cavendel> I’m not sure how it exceeds the danger threshold when a bicycle is (arguably) more dangerous since it can’t keep up with motorized traffic which in many places is the vast majority of traffic.
My measly one-lung Harley WAS dangerous. That’s the point. It taught me that driving was hazardous, and I shouldn’t count on power to pull me out of danger. It wasn’t much of a danger to anyone else on the road, that’s the other point. I like your system, robstar, which seems to be inspired by my own story.
What happens is this: in most people, the prefrontal cortex doesn’t completely develop until 21-25 years of age. This part of your brain is, among other things, responsible for consequence-processing.
There’s been a few recent studies that suggest that, until young adulthood, human beings are functionally retarded in this very specific sense: they are unable to process consequences of their actions as well as, or as intuitively as, an adult with a fully-developed brain can.
If you’re a parent and you’ve ever, exasperatedly, exclaimed “What were you thinking!?” to a child, the answer, even if left unsaid, is that they weren’t. More importantly, they can’t, or at least can’t as well as we can.
Another point is that males process risk in a very different way than females. Women deal with risk in terms of absolutes (eg “Will I get hurt?”), where men manage risk in terms of degree (eg, “How bad will it hurt?”). This makes men more likely to take risks to begin with because it’s not the psychological obstacle it is for women. Combine that with a functional retardation in their ability to risk-assess and you’re looking at higher potentials for problems.
What this means is that, yes, we probably shouldn’t be licensing them to drive until at least the age of 21 and possibly as late as 25—especially in men. We also ought to not be trying them adults, allowing them conscripting them into military service, or allowing them to vote. Good luck with that.
It’s all well and good to profess about how you learned responsibility and such, but for most people, neurology (and the statistics that result) state that kids are going to be inherently handicapped when it comes to risk assesment. You can, and should, try to teach risk-assessment, but we should realize they’re going to be inherently bad at it.
How about eliminating the driver’s license minimum age…
…but make the test not only a gauge of driver acumen, but of responsibility as well?
IE: Give scenario questions with answers that require the level of cognitive awareness that is found in responsible people.
That way, we’d eliminate as many irresponsible drivers as possible, REGARDLESS of age. While at the same time, allowing any responsible person the ability to drive.
Without experience, kids are not going to get the proper training. I think graduated licenses are a great idea, as it allows kids to gain experience while minimizing the risk of stupid behavior.
Yes, the prefrontal cortex isn’t fully developed (I’m a cognitive neuroscientist who studies executive control and the prefrontal cortex, BTW), but by coddling them until they are older, you end up with a bunch of adult children.
Case in point: I was shocked recently to have talked to two graduate students who had never driven on the freeway because they were afraid (e.g. 66, I-95). They’d rather drive on surface streets and backroads than take the freeway. You could explain to them that the freeway was safer, but it didn’t matter, as they had been so coddled that they were afraid to even try.
In contrast, when I was 17, and bunch of us drove 500 miles to Panama City for spring break. My parents trusted us and we turned out OK. Actually, we made it there in 6 hours, so maybe they shouldn’t have trusted us!
I’m also a TN resident and love the freedoms we have here. HOWEVER I think the licensing program here is idiotic. To get my driver’s license for a car in ’88 I had to pass a written multiple choice test (aced it) and then drive around a parking lot. Tester checked to see if I was using my signals and stopping at the stop SIGN (singular).
My motorcycle license was the same, different written test.
Both times I witnessed teen girls flunking the tests. WTF? Study a little!!!
I was glad to have the freedoms but worry about who else I share the roads with here. The vehicles in the rural counties are not inspected either. Again I love the freedom but worry about the other vehicles I share the road with.
I kind of like Robstar’s idea with some tweaks.
I’d let a kid of 16 in good academic standing have a license (no legal troubles either) drive something with less than ~90 horsepower. That’s a mid-80s VW Rabbit type vehicle. Or a 125cc motorcycle or less.
At 18 I’d let drivers go through a more intensive British style driver’s test with several miles of road testing with a ride-along tester. Let them drive a 150HP vehicle of any type or a 500cc motorcycle.
If a person joins the military or reaches 21 then with a final test, no tickets, etc that person would be licensed for anything a normal person is allowed to drive today here.
Again each stage would require the driver to be in good academic standing, no trouble with the police, no tickets, and/or in good standing with the military.
Good side effect? The yahoos (troublemakers with no personal ambition) would be saving gasoline by being restricted to 90HP vehicles. 90HP vehicles can still be fun to drive and can look sharp.
DUIs or DWIs would lead to any person getting knocked back down to 16 year old standards. Restart the process. Repeat offenders would find themselves riding 50cc scooters. Third time offenders would find themselves calling for a taxi for several years. Or let them ride a bicycle – even electric.
I’d also test everybody every 2 years over the age of about 76 years old. Vision, motor skills, cognitive abilities. I have a grandmother I’d like to have off the road but the law says she can drive and the rest of my family doesn’t agree with me – yet.
I would also create vehicle inspection programs that simply ensure that a person’s vehicle was in good condition. Suspension/steering would be within safe tolerances. Exhaust intact though modified would be tolerated. Tires in good condition. Legal lighting properly aimed.
I wouldn’t try to make any more things illegal – just ensure that everything works as it was intended to. I remember a minitruck about a decade ago here that had broken spring/axle u-bolts. Dude was just driving it around oblivious (?) to the rear axle flopping forward, backward and upward. My brother-in-law once told me about a sporty compact car he was hired to put a stereo into. He popped the hood and was shocked to find an airbag system or hydraulic suspension TACK welded into the truck. He wouldn’t work on the truck. I recently saw a Hyundai sedan with tires SO BALD that there wasn’t even a hint of tread left on the tires. One had cords showing through.
I remember a street rod at a show when I was a kid that used a Craftsman socket set U-joint in his steering column. Claimed he bought it for the lifetime warranty! It also failed as he backed into a parking spot minutes after being on I-75.
$6+ gasoline would take care of these problems automatically. People would begin to aspire to live closer to shopping and work places again. The young and the old would not be able to readily afford to drive anywhere on a whim.
Not wishing for $6 gas mind you, just making a comment.
Increasing the driving age could alleviate the issue of immaturity but won’t fix the issue of inexperience. Somebody I have worked with obtained his license a year ago at age 24 and has had 4 accidents in the past year.
I doubt it is a good idea to restrict the power available in vehicles for newer drivers. On one hand it makes abuse less likely. On the other hand the ability to accelerate is just as important as the ability to slow down, stop, and steer (in terms of safety). Underpowered vehicles can be safely driven, but there are occasions the ability to accelerate can help to avoid an accident (I have been in these situations a few times, and was grateful I didn’t have a 4 cylinder car).
Younger people do make more immature decisions, I know that my driving was very reckless when I was in High School, but without that driving experience I would have had a lot of the same problems learning to drive at 18.
It’s a part of our culture, and we can afford to abolish it in urban areas, but I feel there would be little to gain from it in small towns.
On the question of HP is just part of the arm’s race we have in America these days.
If we legislated more 90HP cars then average traffic speeds would slow down a little too. I lived overseas where a significant portion of the traffic had as little as 20 horsepower and while the top speeds were often 120 km/h the acceleration from the stop lights was more modest. An American might describe it as choked by the slowest cars but I disagree and folks there just coped.
I’d like to see a return of low power cars. I think the rush to sub-7 sec 0-60 times for commuter cars is a waste and just encourages the rest of us to buy something faster the next time we buy a vehicle. Just burns alot of gasoline and wear out alot of tires and brakes.
I drive a car with 115HP quite successfully. I still outrun most of the cars in the traffic around me here if I want to. Previous cars had as little as 40 HP and still even sharing the road with 300 HP traffic I was fine.
I do recognize that some metropolitan areas have very fast paced traffic. In fact I really dislike driving to Nashville or Atlanta (among others) regardless of how powerful my vehicle is. Again my 115HP four banger does just fine. The pace doesn’t help shorten my trip that much (perhaps mere minutes). America’s vehicle HP is out of control I think and we take advantage of it more often than we need to.
Put more slow-poke cars back into the mix (70s/ early 80s era economy performance) and traffic would slow down again and make it safer for everyone and I still don’t think anyone’s commute will be that much slower.