Poll: In the States you can have a drivers license at 16. That is much too young.

[Jacco]

As a fifteen year old eligible take the driver's exam and get her driver's license in exactly 30 days, I have to disagree with you on sixteen being too low an age to drive. Also, the girl you encountered was an idiot, and not everyone my age is like that. Next, at least in the state I live in, talking on your cell phone while driving is illegal for everyone under 18.

I'm not really sure how to keep idiot girls like the one you saw off the road other than to raise the age to be able to get a license, and I'm sure if I was older I would agree with you completely, but as it happens I'm really looking forward to getting my license, so I really can't agree with you.

I know exactly what you are saying. When I was 16 i tried to convince everyone around me that 16 year old could drive and were no worse off than anyone else. I was excited to get my license and did so 3 months after my birthday.

I guarantee you that as you get older (20, 21) you will indeed look back and see things from the POV of my OP. I mean nothing insulting toward you when I say this, but it is, quite simply, that you are not mature enough to really understand that just like I wasn't when I was 16.

 

[Jaime_Wolf]

It was a 16 or 17 year old girl and, I shit you not, she had her phone to one ear, a tube of mascara or something in the other and was looking in the rearview mirror as she was applying it. One knee was resting on the bottom of the steering wheel and the other leg looked like it was operating the pedals. I was so shocked and stunned that all I could do was stare at her until the car behind me beeped his horn because the light was green.

You must not pay much attention when you drive. This sort of thing isn't just the purview of the young. In fact, I see far more adults doing things like this than kids - most giving the excuse that they think they can manage to do several things while driving because they have so much more experience. The more experience they have, the worse they tend to be about it.

If you're too lazy to read all of that, basically I decided that 16 is too young to drive because I almost died the other day thanks to a stupid 16 year old girl.

I can play this game too, a few weeks ago I got cut off by a respectable-looking middle-aged man:
"Basically I decide that 50 is too young to drive because I almost died the other day thanks to a stupid 50 year old man."
The same reasoning can hold for any age.

There will always be people driving badly and they can be found in all age categories. Basing your opinion about an entire group off of a singular incident is profoundly illogical.

More to the point, it has relatively little to do with age. Stupid multitasking increases with driver experience and age, so you're not solving that problem. As for bad driving in general, a twenty-year-old new driver is remarkably similar in ability and stupidity to a sixteen-year-old new driver. Starting them young just means they accumulate driving experience sooner. Age doesn't magically make people better drivers - we're just used to older people driving better simply because they've driven longer.

A better solution would be to actually enforce cell phone laws and actually report people who drive recklessly like this, regardless of age. Raising the age cut-off might go some way toward fixing the problem, but it ignores all of the older people doing the same thing and unfairly punishes all of the younger people who are driving reasonably.

 

[Gaiseric]

Young drivers typically aren't the best drivers in the world which is why they have to pay more in insurance, but honestly I see more 20-30 and elderly driving like idiots. I've almost been hit many times(mostly I didn't get hit cause I pay attention and was able to react in time) by more "experienced" drivers than the newbies.

Southern CA isn't known for having the best drivers though so it could just be my area.

 

[Jacco]

snip

I didn't base my opinion on just that experience. I clearly said in my post that I see things like that all the time. This was just most recent and the gravest offense I've seen. As it happens, I drive quite a bit. I live in Denver which is a very large city by land area. As I said before, I don't see just teenagers doing these things, but a disproportionate number of careless drivers I do see are teenagers.

 

[andyboyd]

Maybe its not the age thats the problem, its more of a respect for the road and other drivers.
Im 19 and from the UK, I've driven since i was 17 and havent crashed yet.
However, when i need a lift somewhere(airport or whatever) a lot of my friends will fiddle with their phone on yap away without paying attention to the road, if i ever pull them up for it their reply is something along the lines of "i wont get caught". This tells me that they don't have proper respect of the dangers on the road. You shouldn't be on your phone while driving because it distracts you, law enforcers arent just being mean.

 

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

The ages are different in each state. In Wyoming it can be as low as 14 with special circumstances, but here in New Jersey you can't drive unsupervised until you're 17.

I was a fine driver when I was 17, and I've seen adults pull the same stupid shit you saw. My mom tried activating a phone while driving, which involved talking on one phone while punching in keys on another. I told her to either pull over to activate the phone, do it later, or let me get the Hell out.

this, in our area i've seen just as many adults/old people make many more mistakes as teenagers, most time when i see a teenager crash, it's usually into a mailbox or something stupid, while most collisions i see on the road are aggressive adults or old people who are too fucking slow to find each pedal. (literally last week called in 911 about an old lady driving toward us on our side of the road, and there was even a fucking 5 foot median in the middle, so she'd been driving that way for at least a mile or two)

and to the person i have quoted, i have also yelled at my mom multiple times for doing the same stupid shit

And your point is? I see stupid ADULTS doing stupid things behind the wheel all the time too. I've so more adults doing completely stupid shit while driving than teenagers.

I've seen people, I shit you not READING FUCKING BOOKS while driving down the freeway at 75-90 MPH. They had a fucking paperback book propped up against the steering wheel while they were driving and their eyes were glued to the book, not the road ahead of them. Or even reading a fucking newspaper and driving. On top of this were the ones on their phones, doing work on their laptops, eating, and in the morning applying makeup or getting dressed in their cars.

Stupidity while driving doesn't just contain itself to teenagers who just got their license, I'm sorry but you're just being pissy because you almost got hit the other day, then you were inconvenienced by having to deal with them at the DMV.

this by far, i've seen full grown adults reading/changing full get ups into suits/dresses while driving on the interstate, i shit you not, because they thought "i'm experienced enough behind the wheel to handle this"

fucking pricks.

it happens of all ages, its called MATURITY, fucking have some.

honestly, it has nothing to do with age, i drove my uncles car at age 14 out to our cousins farm just fine, and then didn't drive for two years and then went out and aced all my driving tests, it's all about maturity and focus on the subject at hand.

 

[HeatproofShAdOw]

Down here in New Zealand, you can get your license at 15 :|. Its being raised in a month to 16 though.

 

[WorldCritic]

I'm American, and honestly, it's hard for me to really say if 16 is an alright age. I started driving when I was fifteen and even though I was responsible, I was too nervous to drive on major roads by myself, so I waited until I was eighteen before I got my license.

Personally I think 18 is a better license age, but I suppose there are some responsible drivers who are younger than that who can handle it.

 

[LordLucan375]

I live in New Zealand, and you can get your learners age 15 here. Normally you would have to drive with a fully certified driver at all times even with the learners, but you don't need anyone with you if your are driving a scooter. So I know some guys who look little more than children drive off every day after school. It does not inspire confidence in our governments' stance of road safety.

 

[kikon9]

Wait, your poll is confusing. Am I voting 'yes 16 is too young to drive' or 'yes 16 year olds should be allowed to drive'?

I do believe 16 is too young, here in the UK it's 17 and that's still too young.

Voting, drinking and sex should all be allowed long before driving, because it's very hard to kill people with those. Killing people with a car takes a slip of concentration.

However learning to drive is not easy and is best attempted young. I think the law should be changed so 17/16 years old can drive but only as provisional drivers, so they have a fully qualified person in the passenger seat to make sure they don't stop concentrating. Perhaps allow a full drivers licence once they've clocked a certain number of hours behind the wheel. This would be almost impossible to enforce, but in an ideal world would be nice.

In America, or at least in my state, that's exactly how it works, though only for a year, and your are completely right about it being difficult to enforce.

 

[hensethe1]

In Faroe Islands you can begin your license when you're 17, but you can't get it untill you're 18. You can buy all the alcohol you want when you're 16, and smoke when you're 18.

But something that has always boggled my mind... In the states, as far as I know, you can drive at 16, smoke at 18 and drink at 21? And that shit makes no fucking sense.

 

[Jaime_Wolf]

snip

I didn't base my opinion on just that experience. I clearly said in my post that I see things like that all the time. This was just most recent and the gravest offense I've seen. As it happens, I drive quite a bit. I live in Denver which is a very large city by land area. As I said before, I don't see just teenagers doing these things, but a disproportionate number of careless drivers I do see are teenagers.

First, I really see far more older folk doing this sort of thing than teenagers (though, to be fair, they tend to be a lot better at being sneaky about it). You might just happen to live in some region that provides a strange exception to that trend though.

Either way, I think we agree that this sort of driving should be stopped. But that's where the most important point lies: why try to stop the behaviour by stopping younger people from driving instead of stopping people who drive badly from driving. Instead of a blanket prohibition, what we actually need is a culture where this sort of behaviour is not acceptable. In most places, this has been achieved for drunk driving - it's a social taboo and if someone suspects a car of countaining a drunk driver, a lot of people are more than willing to call the police and report it. When people talk on the cell phone while driving or apply makeup or what have you, people either don't seem to care at all or only care enough to go complain about the driving of whatever social group the driver most obviously belongs to. One feels like the police would likely just laugh if you called in to report someone who was just driving badly. This is the problem, not the fact that younger people, taken as a whole, tend to be worse drivers.

(I tried to edit the original post before you replied to it, but it looks like you saw an earlier one. I'm working on very little sleep and some of it came across differently than I had intended. Sorry.)

 

[PhiMed]

Probably, but unfortunately 16 has been the driving age for so long, and prosperity has allowed people to begin driving at that age for such an extended period of time, that we'd have a lot of restructuring to do. Society has developed the expectation that people 17 years and older will have a car and will be able to operate it.

I'm ok with what are called graduated licenses, like they have in my state (TN). You're allowed to get a learner's permit at 15 (where you can drive as long as you're supervised by a licensed driver over the age of 21), a probationary license at 16 (where you can drive, but only during certain hours and without anyone under the age of 18 in the car), a provisional license at 17 (where you can drive during certain hours, and are allowed non-supervisory passengers), and a full license at 18.

 

[HerbertTheHamster]

It has more to do with how long you've been driving than when you start. 70% of all traffic accidents are by people who have only been driving for a year or so, it doesn't matter if they're 15 or 45.

 

[Lord RPGs]

I live in Australia, and that's the lowest age you can get a Learner Licence. The person learning in question has to spend a certain amount of hours in car with someone who's already passed their full Licence, so it limits the amount of stupid stuff like that which can happen. Then there's another two levels of licence to go through (each taking at least a year) before you can get on your full licence.

I'm all for letting people drive at 16, as long as it's handled properly.

 

[darthzew]

I was nineteen when I got my first license. It was a license in the States. This happened because of complications from living in Brazil. But anyway, while I was at the DMV office, there were all these damn kids getting driver's licenses and permits. I would not trust any of them to operate a motor vehicle.

 

[Nemesis729]

I'm American and I don't think 15 is to young, Though I think there are plenty of 15 year olds who are not ready for the responsibility of driving, as I think there are many 18 year olds who who are not ready either.

I wish there was a better way to determine these things than age but none of them are practical unfortunatly

 

[SulfuricDonut]

In Canada it's the same way (unless you meant North America in which I apologize).

I don't think it's too young at all, as I have seen people of all ages with equally bad driving habits (if not worse ones as they get older).
And if you're going to use the "16 is too young to be experienced enough" excuse; People need to start driving sometime, and it doesn't matter when they start they'll still have zero experience. Might as well start early when kids are most capable of learning quickly.

Plus having a driver's licence helps kids to become more independent, a trait they will need once they leave high school. So it's a good idea to help them become that way by letting them drive while they are still in school.

I myself have driven since I was like 8, because I live on a farm. Considering that I was already quite an experienced driver when I got my full licence at 17.

 

[the spud]

No. Assuming that every 16 year old is a crazy driver seems...a little arrogant, honestly. Also, I will be needing my liscense at 16, as I will be leaving for college early (What would I do if I couldn't even get to school?).