I mean non provisional, real license.
I personally think 16 and 1/2 (here in the U.S.A. that’s the legal age) is a little young, granted, I didn’t feel that way at the time I received mine, obviously. heh…
I think 19-20 is a good age, what say you, Dopers?
I don’t think fairness is the issue so much as practical needs. When US teenagers become eligible to get jobs—and that’s at age 16 for unrestricted hours, age 14 for more limited work—then in many cases they start needing to drive. How are you going to tell kids who need to work full-time starting at 16 or 17 that they can’t get a driver’s license until they’re 19 or 20?
I personally think that reducing our dependence on the automobile, at least in more densely populated areas of the country, would have a lot of benefits, including reducing the need for teens to drive. (Not to whale on teenagers, but it’s statistically incontrovertible that disproportionate numbers of them do really dumb things behind the wheel, including driving drunk, which are dangerous to themselves and others.) But I’m not sure that simply cutting minors off from driving privileges altogether is the way to go.
I got mine on my 15th birthday in Louisiana in 1988 but I was allowed reasonable trips by myself in my mother’s old car when I turned 14. That was by necessity because my parent’s had just gotten divorced, my mother worked 120 miles away (she commuted round trip each day), and I had a house and brothers to help take care of. I started working when I was 15 and bought my own truck shortly thereafter. I can’t see much of a way around that and I am sure there are kids in similar situations now. You can’t tell them to catch the bus when there isn’t any and no sidewalks either.
You can’t give one age to apply to all teenagers and areas. Those farm kids really do need to drive and the U.S. is just set up so that cars are a necessity especially in rural areas. It doesn’t seem right to have 17 year olds stuck at home, unable to get a job, and learning to drive at the same time they are learning to do keg stands in college.
15 may be a little young except for farm kids but I think 16 works out fine almost everywhere else (except for New Jersey by their own standard). I have no idea how it would work if you just had hoards of high school juniors and seniors that couldn’t get themselves places.
I got mine at 14; I wasn’t mature enough to drive alone. 16 would have been better.
I think that people who want to drive should be made to attend driver’s ed and pass stringent tests. It’s ludicrous that in this day and age you need courses for everything else but mommy or sister can take you out and give you the basics and then you get to take a heavy instrument and send it hurtling down roads.
I refused to drive without taking driver’s ed and I’m glad I did. I use some of the information I learned there to this very day and I know nobody in my family or friends would have known to teach me those things.
Age? If someone is mature enough to do the lessons and pass tests at 16, that’s fine but they should probably be allowed to drive in daytime only until they have a couple years’ experience under their belts.
Our driver’s license was almost a full license at 15 but we did have a late-night restriction from I think 11 pm - 6 am (or close to that). Almost all of us took a pretty intensive driver’s ed course during the summer that ran for weeks. We got high school credit for it but the real incentive was the insurance company discount so most parents were more than happy to slap their kids in drivers ed for that reason alone.
I casually thought of it as being rather slack but now that you bring those things up, we did have lots of training and structure. Maybe it wasn’t so crazy.
It’s not a one-size-fits-all. Some kids are mature enough at 14… some 30 year olds aren’t mature enough. I think 16 is reasonable considering the working age, activities, etc. but drivers ed and defensive driving should be mandatory and we should be re-tested every few years.
This is coming from someone who has been in 6+ wrecks. I was driving in only 1 of the wrecks (last week) and it was not my fault. I was a passenger in the rest of them.
I think 16.5 is perfectly fair, as stated above it’s more of a necessity of modern life. I guarantee you I’ll be looking forward to not having to drive my children to every social engagement they want to go to and I’ll trust them enough to allow them to do so. On an individual basis if a teen does NOT have his parent’s trust, there’s nothing in the laws forcing them to get their license or have a car to drive at 16.
Not everywhere. In WA state if you want a licence before you’re 18 you must take a driver’s ed class, have your instruction permit for at least six months, and have 50 hours of drive time (10 of them at night) with other drivers who have been licenced for at least 5 years. And also not have any traffic or drug violations in the last 6 months.
Same sort of thing in VA, except for the last thing. Also, here you have to take ‘Behind the Wheel’ which is basically driving with a professional instructor for 20 hours or something like that. I think it’s a good system, except that 40 hours is simply not enough; I would really not want to get into a car with anyone who had that little experience.
this is true but note the “Under 18” portion of this.
I teach Drivers ed in Washington, the course I teach is a very developed and very indepth curriculum but I would say at least 25% of the girls and 60% of the guys in the class arent even close to mature enough to be driving a car.
the course I teach is all about personal safety and resposibility and while my teens can be a pain to teach due to maturity problems I have to be honest parents are the ones who truly make my job a pain in the ass. I teach my students skills NEW drivers need to stay safe on the road, they go home and mom and dad then teach them the crap they learned 20 years ago in highschool drivers ed.
its possible America may be headed for an 18 and over license and a Required traffic safety course to get a license at any age some time in the next 10 years or so. personally it would make my life infinitly easier.
that said I dont have a problem with an extended intermediate license where at 16 you might be able to drive yourself to places like work and school. kids who are responsible enough to do that and not get tickets deserve to drive at a younger age, but get a ticket and poof there goes your intermediate license.
dont even get me started on the over 18 licensing laws in this country, I seriously think you could train a monkey to pass the American Drive test.
Here in Japan, the minimum age for a driver’s license is 20, the tests (set nationally) are relatively stringent (failing is common), and driving school (which runs to the thousand-dollar range) is required. People getting licenses in their 30’s are unexceptional. This means that drivers tend to get their licenses after they’ve finished (or at least when they’re much further along) the emotional turbulence of puberty, and are more likely to be on their own, working at jobs, supporting themselves and starting families.
Two effects of this, in my opinion (i.e., no cites):
Less recklessness by new drivers, since they’re less likely to be in the ‘dumb and immortal’ stage of life, plus they’re likely to have invested more time and money into getting their licenses.
Most people have spent a fair amount of time getting around on bicycles and scooters, so car and truck drivers are more accepting of two-wheel traffic. I don’t get pelted with trash by passing motorists when I bike, and I’ve yet to hear the “bicycles don’t belong on the street” argument.
A possible downside is that the drinking age is also 20, so drivers may be getting their first exposure to alcohol before they’ve fully internalized the responsibilities of operating a motor vehicle, and vice-versa.
Question: When should children be allowed to walk?
Answer: As soon as they can!
Why does age enter into the picture at all?
If a person can demonstrate that they are capable of safely operating a motor vehicle and have a decent understanding of the rules of the road, they should be given a license.
Personally, I’d like to see tougher driving tests and throw the age requirement out the window. There are far too many idiot drivers of all ages on the road. I’ve yet to see any indication that age is a factor, only experience.
I am not a proponent of higher driving ages per above but I think you underestimate how foolish and reckless teenagers, especially males can be. It does seem to be a developmentmental thing apart from general experience. A teenage boy might be exceptional in terms of knowing the rules of the road, the mechanics of it, and everyday driving ability. However, come Friday night, out comes the drinking and drag racing and god know what else. I never got into an accident even though I started driving by myself at 14 but I did some incredibly stupid things in the early years that have easilly resulted in death. Those were things like racing and stunts apart from the regular driving to school and work so there is definetly a split problem there.
I am not opposed to all commonsense measures for young drivers. One that makes sense to me is limiting the number of non-family teenagers that can be in a car with a teenage driver. Experience and ancedotal evidence from the news suggest that groups of teenagers in the same car can be bad news and there are more people at stake when crashes happen.
My main problem with higher driving ages is that most of the country is hardly like NYC, Boston, or suburban New Jersey. There is no way to get to other places other than driving so teenagers almost have to do it once their schedules and responsibilities and schedules become independent of their parents.
For not the first time, I am impressed with the maturity of this board. No one has responded, “It’s my God given right to climb behind the wheel at 16, 15, whatever and I will exercise my rights.”
I see good thoughtful and well reasoned answers.
I agree that males can be reckless and foolish (females, too, though maybe slightly less frequently), I just don’t think it stops at any particular age. I’ve known plenty of risky and reckless idiots of all ages, and I think the only thing that moderates their behavior in a car is their own experience. Call me cynical, but I think it takes a few mistakes to gain a little experience, in any endeavor, and that a certain natural selection plays into it as well. I’m lucky in that my biggest screw-ups in an automobile have been dinging a garage, bumping into telephone poles and getting stuck in ditches. Unfortunately some people get into fatal accidents. At some level, the ones left after their teenage years have learned how to minimize accidents, or else have died in one. That’s why we see less accidents for drivers over twenty-five or so.
Thats my theory, anyway. If somebody could point me to accident statistics for states or countries where the driving age is 18 or older, we could settle this right away. I predict that the first two or three years of legal driving will have about the same accident rates, regardless of what those ages actually are. I’m certainly willing to admit I’m wrong though if somebody can show me otherwise. Without statistics, though, I think this debate is just a bunch of people volunteering their own opinions on which age group they trust the most.
Well, of course. We’re all cranky old farts now.
As others have said, I don’t think it necessarily corresponds to physical age but capability, maturity, etc. For some, it’s 16. For others, it really isn’t ever.
I think the driving age should either stay at 16 or be raised to 18 (I’d be fine with either of these; I took driver’s ed at 15 and didn’t bother getting my license until 2 days before my 18th birthday, so you can’t tell me I only support raising the age limit because I’m now past either year ;)). But the important thing is that I really think that driver’s licenses should be much harder to get. Even the increasingly more common systems of having restricted licenses with road and written tests (and required hours of practice) are not enough.
Driving is not a right, it is a privelige*. This privelige lets you move a multi-ton slab of metal around at high speeds. Road tests should be much more demanding, driver’s ed should be required and more expensive and people should really have to work and practice and know what they’re doing before they even attempt to do a road test. It should also be easier to revoke licenses (at least temporarily) for reckless driving.
This might be a good thing, but if we’re even going to consider implementing it, we’re going to have to hitch up our collective pants and actually do something about providing useful non-automobile transportation in many more areas than we currently do.
We can’t simultaneously structure our neighborhoods and workplaces (not to mention our economy) to depend on nearly every adult resident driving a car daily and also decide we’re going to make driver’s licenses much harder to get.
I got my learner’s permit at 14 and my license at 16. The first license was only valid for two years, and after that it bumped up to four.
I had plenty of time to learn to drive,* both with my parents/grandfather and in Driver’s Ed, so I don’t see any reason why the system should be changed.
My 13 year old nephew is getting very eager for his permit.
My first time behind the wheel* was nearly catastrophic since I almost backed into a grocery store at highway speed, but DIDN’T, and then almost hit a pole, but DIDN’T, and DID mess up the engine. Not too badly though, and later that day my father took me out to a deserted area and taught me how to drive.
**With my permit. The first time with my license I turned a corner too sharply and got in a fender bender. Not a bad one though; only about $100 dollars damage to the other car…I’m not making a good case here, am I? Still, accidents happen and I learned from both of them.