Should 14 and 15 year olds be able to get full driver's licenses?

[Ban my account ffs!]

Is there really a pressing need for 14 year old's to drive?  Why not make it 12 or 10?  Is there any reason why it should be lowered?

I think the idea behind it was so that kids in rural areas could drive themselves to school. But I lived in an urban area and could still get my license at the same age (got it at 15 though).

I just turned 16 and now I have to get Behind the Wheels Lesson and wait almost month before getting my permit, which I must wait til I'm 17 to get a license.  But I see why NJ has a higher age than ND, just compare the conditions

There are parts of NJ more rural than where I lived in ND.

You can get a license at 14 in Minnesota if you live on a farm and you're conducting farm business.  You can also drive at 14 if you are the only person that can drive a disabled parent around.  I think those are about the only circumstances in which a 14 year old should be able to get a license. 

[The Man From G.O.P.]

When you specify down to the less populated rural states, I can see this working.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

When you specify down to the less populated rural states, I can see this working.

But not all parts of them are less populated and rural.

[Nym90]

Yes, but it should be much more difficult to pass driver's education for drivers of all ages.

The course and the testing should be made more rigorous and more difficult to pass, and age restrictions should be eliminated.

[specific_name]

voted no. In the cases or rural areas and farm use, I think it should be limited to those specific purposes. People should be able to obtain a permit to drive to and from work, not a full licence at that age.

Now that I've gotten older, I see a need for age restrictions on drivers licenses. When I was 16 it seemed really unfair, but now that I'm moving into adulthood, it's clear that teens can be some of the most dangerous drivers. I really hate overbarring restrictions but in this case I think lives will be saved if it's more difficult to get a license at a young age.

[angus]

Why not.

1.  children are irresponsible.

2.  we're already so dependent on foreign oil that we're spending huge amounts of our national treasure on armies to maintain its supply.

3.  making it that much easier to drive gives us another reason not to invest in public transit.

4.  children are ignorant and naive.

5.  children should be playing and enjoying the irresponsibilities of their lives, or maybe getting to know their organs intimately, or learning to get laid, or maybe even preparing for their futures by studying or practicing the piano;  they don't need to be driving to do these things.

6.  road rage is a serious issue, and it's already bad enough without adding a demograph known for poor judgement to the mix.

7.  cars add pollution in the form of unburned hydrocarbon and particulate matter, and they also increase the amount of infrared-absorbing gases in the air.  It may be easy enough to justify if we're talking about breadwinners ensuring the family's economic survival, but 14-year-olds will add pollution frivolously.

8.  These students enter college without being able to define critical thinking or find Iraq on a map or rescue x from f(x) in a timely manner, and giving them cars only adds to the distractions.

I'll try to think of more reasons later, but overall, the driving and voting ages are far too low already.  The drinking age, on the other hand, is artificially high.  We have it backward.  If you're concerned with too much drinking and driving, then it's the driving age that should be high and the drinking age low.  I'd be comfortable with a driving age of 25 and a drinking age of 12.

I also think that really old people have no business driving since the very old cause as many problems as the very young, although for different reasons.

For that matter, I shouldn't be allowed to drive.  I'm a reasonably nice guy, but I'm a bastard behind the wheel.  I have more speeding tickets than you have fingers and toes.  I once got pulled over in the 12th grade because my girlfriend was giving me a blow job while I was driving.  Seriously.  And we both got lectured by the cop for a long time.  Now, I don't much like policemen, but this one was right.  And we were lucky that all we got was a stern lecture from him.  And I can't count the number of times I drove home from parties drunk off my ass, or stoned on weed, or high on coke.  In fact, by the age of 19 I had to go to court to defend my license because I'd had something like 32 moving violations by that time.  Times have changed, and I probably have had my license revoked nowadays with that record.

We give out drivers licences with abandon, and it's killing people, damaging the environment, increasing our obesity by an average of 7 pounds per year according to one study, and making us die young of heart attacks due to road rage.  The advantages of allowing even younger folks to drive are real, but in my opinion do not outweigh the many disadvantages.

[ilikeverin]

No; the age to get drivers' licenses should be 18.  I should not have a drivers' license.

(To the inevitable: as you can see, the tendency for teens to succumb to peer pressure is another reason to disallow teens getting drivers' licenses )

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Teenagers need driver's licenses. High school kids work too. Plus without one I couldn't have all those fun nights in Minot.

[memphis]

Personally I believe that every 5-10 years EVERYONE should have to retake and pass the driver's exam.

Because the lines at the DMV areb't long enough as is. It currently takes about SIX HOURS to get a driver's license here because of lines. Is it as bad where you guys live?

[Wakie]

Personally I believe that every 5-10 years EVERYONE should have to retake and pass the driver's exam.

Because the lines at the DMV areb't long enough as is. It currently takes about SIX HOURS to get a driver's license here because of lines. Is it as bad where you guys live?

If it saves lives and reduces insurance costs then I think I can handle slightly longer lines at the DMV.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

Given the standard of most drivers on Irish roads many of whom are well over the age of 18... Carnage, Carnage I tell ye, should this daft proposal ever be considered across the pond. (Of course 18 is (in theory) the legal age here.)

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Kids in high school have jobs too. Plus they also go to things like the prom and having your parents drive you there isn't exactly the coolest thing (mind you, I never went to the prom and hate proms, but that's just me). So I don't understand how people can expect teenagers not to drive.

[Boris]

18 is way too high. 16 is far more appropriate, at least where I live. It's impossible to go anywhere in the suburbs without a car. I honestly don't remember how I managed without a driver's license.

If anything, up the amount of driving time needed to obtain a license, but don't increase the driving age.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Might I also ask, do you really want people becoming adults without any driving experience?

[angus]

Might I also ask, do you really want people becoming adults without any driving experience?

My kneejerk reaction, like most folks, would be no.  But when I was working in California I worked with a fellow who didn't have a driving license till he moved to California.  He grew up in a smallish town in plains of lower Illinois and went to college in mullet country as well.  Then went to grad school at U Chicago, on the bad side of town, maybe not far from A Man Named Leroy Brown.  Wasn't till he was nearly 30 and came out west that he ever got a license.  And he was actually a decent driver.  I also know other people who didn't get licenses till they were either postdocs or had a real job and they all drove fine. 

My wife, on the other hand, didn't get a license till she was nearly 30, and it was when we lived in Boston, and is a really lousy driver.  One day, about a year ago, she plowed my Mercedes into our wall.  The wall.  The red, brick, stationary wall that just sits there most of the time.  Weird.  It was one of the first times she'd left me with the boy, and we were having a great time.  She went to see the eye doctor.  Some time later, I was in the kitchen with my son and boom.  One loud crack.  Sounded like a gun.  And one quick jerk of the entire building.  My instinct was to grab the boy and hold him and my second instinct was to run toward the aquarium, since that was the only victim in my apartment that ever suffered in such small quakes.  And a mess it is when a 20-gallon aquarium takes a shake enough to fall, and you run to catch it, and it's like it's in slow motion, but you know you don't want to get under 160 pounds of water surrounded by glass even if you could.  Luckily the aquarium is still on its stand.  But then I immediately thought, hey we're not living on a fault line.  Where are we?  Oh, snap.  We're living in the soft clays and loamy grey soil of the Tombigbee River valley on the MS-AL border.  So I put him down.  What was that boom?  I figured some huge truck hit our building somewhere, because there's quite a bit of construction in the neighborhood for the 32 months we have lived here, so I went out on the balcony to look out.  But didn't see anything.  Then I look down and see her way up on the grass, many feet from our designated #24 parking spot, and my car is against the wall, with what used to be 3-foot-tall shrubs penned under the heavy German undercarriage.  Long explanation.  I still don't know what the hell happened except that there was apparently some confusion over which is the brake and which is the accelerator.  That confusion cost me quite a bit of money to fix.  And unfortunately it's not atypical of her.  Ah, well.  We're going for an Volvo S80 next time I think.  In August.  After we get settled in Cedar Falls.  It's a less pleasant climate there, it'll at least have ice and snow.  I want all the bells, whistles, and lasers connected to a brain to think for you even if the bells and whistles don't work, and all sorts of fluffies and foamies that pop out everywhere in case the lasers and car-brain doesn't work.  But anyway, my wife's driving aside, most of the folks I have met who didn't learn to drive till they were older were pretty good drivers.

[angus]

Anyone should be able to get one, but the tests should be MUCH more difficult.  Both the written test and the driving test are ridiculously easy (at least in NJ).  There are a ton of teenagers who should not have licenses any time soon, yet there are also some who should have them sooner.

Actually, the testing is a good point.  Of all the times I got a license, there were only two times that I actually had to take a test.  The first time was at 16.  The second time was upon moving to California where I had to, in addition to surrenderring my Massachusetts license, I also had to take a written exam.  But in all the other states, all I had to do was surrender my current out-of-state license, show that I wasn't blind, and fill out a short form to get a license.  From a consumer point of view, it was good.  Nothing worse than sitting around the DMV (or RMV, or DPS, or DLV depending on the state).  But from the point of view of the state wanting people to be well versed in the rules, laws, and customs of driving it seems awfully cheesey.  There may be other states besides CA in which you have to take the exam to exchange a license, but that's the only one I have ever encountered.  And how easy is the test?  I scored a 100% both times I had to take the test, and I studied far less than I study for most exams. 

The driving test I took only once, and it was far more difficult, but not terribly so.  I don't think I made a 100 on that part, but obviously I passed even without much driving practice.  Apparently the ability to park a car parallel to a curb without hitting an orange cone before or behind the vehicle is a major stumbling block for most folks, and is considered the most difficult part.  Many folks say that they couldn't pass the test because they couldn't partk.  How sad is that?  Really, do most major accidents occur while someone is parking?  Do most auto fatalities result from an inability to put a car next to a curb?  If not, then the fact that this is the most difficult part for many folks is telling. 

So yeah I'll agree, both written and driving exams are easy.  And easier still is getting a new license in a new state without even having to take any test. 

Still, statistics are clear:  the plurality of driving accident are caused not by stoners, drunks, or women.  They are caused by the very young (40% of all accidents) and the very old (25%).  Adolescents are 4 times more likely to die in, and 3 times more likely to cause, accidents than the general population.  So if it's public safety you're worried about, the age should definitely not be lowered, but rather raised.

[S019]

Umm, absolutely not

14 and 15 year olds are not ready to drive, that would assume that practice has to start around 12 or 13, this is a terrible idea

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Kids in high school have jobs too. Plus they also go to things like the prom and having your parents drive you there isn't exactly the coolest thing (mind you, I never went to the prom and hate proms, but that's just me). So I don't understand how people can expect teenagers not to drive.

Proms are supposed to be a subsidy for limo services.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Umm, absolutely not

14 and 15 year olds are not ready to drive, that would assume that practice has to start around 12 or 13, this is a terrible idea

Uh, no. Practice starts at 14 in North Dakota.

[S019]

Umm, absolutely not

14 and 15 year olds are not ready to drive, that would assume that practice has to start around 12 or 13, this is a terrible idea

Why would that be the case? I started practicing 3 months before turning 16, and got my license 5 months after turning 16, so 8 months later. It certainly doesn't take 2 years.

I guess I'm biased, I live in NJ

Where the law is

16: permit
17: provisional license
18: full license

Also you cannot start practicing, until after a permit

[Dr. MB]

NJ disappoints as usual.

Here you can get your permit at 15 and license at 16, I used to think it was that way everywhere because it just makes the most sense. The restrictions still exist obviously but like 1776 said they're usually ignored.

[Sestak]

Doesn't NJ also have that dumbass full service gas law? Should we really be using them as a useful benchmark or standard for anything concerning car-related laws?

[dead0man]

Doesn't NJ also have that dumbass full service gas law? Should we really be using them as a useful benchmark or standard for anything concerning car-related laws?

to be fair to the NJ legislatures that came up with the moronic law, people from NJ (and non-rural people in Oregon) probably are too stupid to pump their own gas.





now we get to have people from NJ try to explain why the law is a good law....hopefull we'll get the sadly not so rare double moron that claims it makes fuel cheaper in NJ....ya know, 'cause it's cheaper in Elizebeth than it is in the city.

[PSOL]

Why not.

[darklordoftech]

To those who say "no", how else do you propose that 14 and 15 year olds travel?