What, Age?

I found an interesting contrast in the ideas of "adults" regarding the rights, abilities, and developmental levels of "children". (I am using quotes on both of those words for a very specific reason, as you will see shortly.) First, one of the car blogs I read regularly, The Truth About Cars, had a post regarding the legal driving age:

Ask The Best And Brightest: Driving Age At 16?

Don't quote me statistics...it is conventional wisdom that driving is a relatively high-risk activity for people of any age, and that it is more high-risk for teen drivers. This page claims that 1 in 3 deaths of teenagers is motor-vehicle-related, which translates to 11 teenagers dying in car wrecks every day. Now, I don't know about you, but I took basics statistics in college, and so when I am presented with any sort of statistic on anything, I usually try to find out if the statistic is meaningfully used in the discussion at hand. I was going to write a long, detailed review of the numbers, doing a little of my own math against the US population at large, to see if the stats I presented above were meaningful. (Short answer: they are, sort of...the fatality rate is slightly greater for the teen population against the population at large, but not to an alarming degree. Also notice that the above stats don't specify how many teens die who aren't driving or when a "qualified" adult is driving. You can do the math yourself: just calculate the percentage of motor-vehicle-related teen fatalities against the total teen population, then figure the percentage of all US motor-vehicle-related fatalities against the entire US population. All the demographic stats are easy to find.)

The commenters to the post above mention all sorts of things to bolster their argument that 16-year-olds aren't ready to drive, saying they don't have the mental development yet, and of course, the standard argument of immaturity. I take issue with these comments, considering that teens have been depended on by their families for years in doing such complex things as driving tractors, planting and harvesting, and other difficult and strenuous tasks. One hundred years ago, a boy was expected to do a man's work at 14 or 15, and was equal to the task. Teens were often married and having kids just as early (we'll get back to this key point later).

Here's how I see it. I started "driving" when I was about 7, when Grandpa let me drive his golf cart around his yard. He and Grandma lived on just over an acre, so they had plenty of room for me to drive it around. Not too long after, I was chauffeuring him around the golf course during his daily morning round during my school vacations, with him giving me important tips on how to keep the thing under control. (His most important lesson was the one where he taught me not to use my left foot on the brake while my right foot was on the gas. Unless you're a racer, you'll almost never need to do that.) Mom and Dad got me my own motor scooter when I was about 10, and I drove it around our neighborhood quite a bit (as you might imagine, riding that thing was a favorite pastime of mine). So by the time I actually got behind the wheel of a full-size motor vehicle, I already had several years of basic driving experience under my belt. I took drivers' ed the summer between my sophomore and junior years, right after I had gotten my learner's permit. (The most important lessons I learned in drivers' ed? 1. Always think ahead, and 2. it's good to actually look over your shoulder to check your blind spot, rather than just using your mirrors.) Mom and Dad let me drive somewhat regularly with them, just around town near our house. On my 16th birthday just a few months later, Dad called me in at school, and as soon as I was up and around, he took me straight to the testing station. I already had my permit, so I didn't have to take the written exam; I just got in line straightaway for my driving test. I took it, and I passed with a 78%. I'm still quite proud that I passed on my first try. I had some minor fender-benders in parking lots but I never did anything stupid when I drove. We didn't have cell phones, and so it actually was much easier to stay focused on driving than it is today, in my opinion. Even when I had friends in the car with me, I managed to stay focused on driving.

The point being, I didn't get killed by driving. None of my friends got killed by driving. I went to high school with 549 other people in my class alone, and at least that many in each of the classes around me, and I knew NO ONE who was killed in a car wreck. There were lots of kids just like me; they were either riding motorcycles or go-karts, or driving golf carts, or doing other kinds of things to get basic driving skills. When the time came, they weren't totally unprepared for the driving experience. In my entire life, I've only known one family personally who lost a teen in a wreck, and the mom was the one driving; she went into a skid and lost control during a strong thunderstorm and crossed the median into oncoming traffic. I know of another instance here locally, the daughter of a friend of my cousin, whose teenager was killed in a wreck out in Tuttle. The wreck was not their fault. So for me, personal experience and knowledge does not bear out the stats above.

I have found that teens often will rise (or fall) to the expectations they are given, and to the level of guidance they are provided. I took Katie out for her first driving lesson last summer. Normally, I would not have thought about this, as she can be very flighty and non-serious. But she was deeply engaged in our lesson, took it very seriously, and worked very hard to do as she was instructed. In short, at 14, she showed great maturity and made me proud (and showed good skills by the time we were done). This would indicate to me that she would take it sufficiently seriously, and besides, no teenager is going to learn to drive except by actually driving. Driving is like anything else; until you're behind the wheel, you really can't get the experience.

Are there kids who will get killed in car wrecks? Sure. There are people or every age who are careless or stupid, and they usually pay for their carelessness or stupidity eventually. Let's face it; you can ratchet up the driving age, but with stuff on TV like Jackass and other shows of that ilk, do you seriously think the stupid and careless teenagers will be able to avoid serious injury and/or death simply because they're not driving?

To add an ironic note to this discussion, and to reconnect to something I said earlier, I post this link:

Condoms for first graders

You might already have heard of this. I find this ridiculous, but in light of the discussion we're having, it raises an important question: we figure that elementary-school kids will have enough knowledge, understanding, maturity, and "development" to handle the responsibility of human reproduction, but we don't trust teens to drive until they're 18 (or older)? How screwed up are our priorities here?

What do you think? Are we really being stupid? Or am I off-base with all of this?