Note to BillW... this is a bit long... 
I going to respond in a general way to this rather than delve into specifics. Mileages are going to vary all over the place. There’s room for intellectual debate on both sides of the issue.
I went through the teenage driving nightmare a long time ago. Having done this, I do not envy parents of teens about to enter the wonderful world of teenage driving rates and the nightmares that await them as their kids take to the roads.
Three times during my life, I’ve driven anxious parents to various emergency rooms and trauma centers only to witness their utter devastation upon learning their children had died.
Among the many activities that I consider potentially “fun-filled” are, ripping my fingernails out with needle nose pliers and castrating myself with the jagged-edged lid of a tuna can.
Like it or not, one of the most critical aspects of teenagers’ maturation is “learning by doing.” Driving is a skill. Aside from the rules part of it, we have to drive in order to become proficient at doing it.
Some age-based prohibitions simply prevent adolescents from learning adult behaviors in adult settings. Yes, we’d probably see a drop in the death rate of teen drivers between the ages of 16 and 17.
However, we’d see an increase in those rates for drivers in the 18 to 20-year-old set. In other words, it would NOT be a matter of saving lives, but simply one of postponing deaths.
I’m a father. I love my children. Even though they are grown and out of the house, the primal urge to protect them still surges through my veins. It was far worse when they were younger, and I had to exercise prodigious control when they began to drive at the age of sixteen years.
Similarly, all of us have to accept the fact that we cannot protect our children from all things. And, in a perpetual quest to do so, we could well smother them in our futile attempts to do so at all costs.
Some activities are dangerous in their very nature. Driving is one of them. People die as the result of automobile accidents. Many of them are teenagers. Until we find a way to remove the human element from the mechanics of driving, this is never going to change.
When I was approaching driving age, shortly after the emergence of the automobile, I was convinced that society could easily have reduced the minimum driving age to about 14-years. I was READY! I wasn’t old enough to vote, though, so the notion went nowhere.
When my own teenagers approached the age of driver’s education and the right to apply for a full-blown license at sixteen years, I was all for raising the minimum driving age to 40-years.
The bottom line, as I see it, is this. The fear mongering, mythmaking, and a growing propensity to enact repressive policies regarding our adolescents do nothing but interfere and postpone improvements that our kids have to do ON THEIR OWN… by doing.
I don’t doubt the sincerity that motivates groups described in this article. But I do question how much more harm such groups are willing to inflict on our adolescents in a seemingly futile crusade to abolish ADOLESCENTS.
Regards,
Joe Walther
Joe Walther
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