From personal experience, from having both teen and adult passengers in the car at 16-17, teens were no more distracting than adults. Ever. They were just, _in the car_. And I had many of BOTH at age 16-17. Your statistics on young passengers in the car, and night time driving, don't appear to prove ANYTHING. You're just saying these derogatory comments, without any actual proof or backup. While you didn't even prove nighttime driving is more dangerous than daytime driving for teens, EVEN IF IT WAS, it may be more dangerous for EVERYBODY ELSE as well! Teens are being denigrated like races and religious groups before them.
In the US, 5.1% of licensed drivers are under 20 years old, but they make up 12.6% of drivers in crashes. Child drivers have the highest involvement in crashes of any age group. Traffic violence is a leading cause of death for teens.
Studies consistently report young drivers are more likely to engage in high-risk behaviors such as speeding, following too closely, and distracted driving.
Still, emotions will prevent many people from making any meaningful change.
Totally flawed analysis. The issue is NEW DRIVERS. Not YOUNG DRIVERS!
The Constitution of the United States demands equal protection. Verne Troyer was 2.5 feet tall, and extended the break and the gas and drove!
"Children" demand an equal right to smoke cigarettes and own property. A contract or signature is a bill/proof of sale, nothing more. You can't sign your Constitutional human rights away,. We don't believe in contracts, - with the devil or otherwise (if there's a problem with big ticket purchases, then everyone should have so many days of recission). But sitting on a Jury and Voting are two totally different matters, -> you have to be 25 to serve in the U.S. House, and 35 to be President.
A lifetime is 7.5 years. Childhood is 3-7. An 8 year old is half child, half adult. 10.5 years old is an adult. 10.5-18 is your first adult lifetime. A toddler under age 3 is mentally incompetent, as someone who needs to be spoon fed. Guardian-Ward = Warden-Ward = Abuser-Abused = Hater-Hated = Hated back. Parents should be merely elder siblings to their children. This whole warden thing is an illegal human rights violation and has got to go. Wardens are at "war" with their wards. People are meant to be brought up, not belittled.
Children demand the equal rights of men.
New drivers do drive worse for their first year or so. However infringing on the rights of some because of the incompetence of others is also questionable. Maybe drivers education programs should just impress upon new drivers, that they are new drivers, and need to driver safer, for their first year. This could be from age 8 to 9.
Just to stir things up…if we have decided that a sixteen year old boy is sufficiently mature to declare “I’m supposed to be a girl!” and consent to bodily mutilation, then driving a car is nothing.
I learned to drive in England and got my license at 17 (minimum age) after my first very stringent test. My driving instructor was an ex-big-city police driving instructor who exceeded the minimum public test-passing standards. My worst accident (at age 20) was when I rolled a friend's car in the dark in wet weather on an unfamiliar winding road ... obviously, in retrospect, youthful inexperience. I hadn't checked the car before agreeing to drive it - the tires were bald, not just worn. Lesson learned and a friendship lost; the car was written off. The only injury was to my pride and confidence. After coming to Saskatchewan, Canada, in winter, I passed the driver's test without prior instruction and was allowed to drive those giant, overpowered 1970s vintage American cars.
Now that I'm in my 80s, I conclude that much more stringent instruction and testing should be required before a limited licence is issued to a new driver in a new country, state, or province. The corollary is that much better public transit, perhaps in new forms, is essential to allow mobility for the young, elderly, and those who are no longer able or willing to drive.
Great piece. Completely agree 16 is far too young and in particular in densely populated urban areas. My daughter elected to hold off on driving for several years. She didn't get her license until a few months ago, aged 20. COVID was a factor. But she also didn't feel ready. I'm grateful she was self aware and took it slow. NOVA/DC driving is stressful even for the experienced. There is a cultural pressure at work for teen driving, coupled with the fact that is hard to get anywhere without a car, even in urban areas. Agree its a major defect in our car-centric infrastructure/planning.
Girls mature earlier than boys -- good that your daughter wasn't in a rush. I grew up in NOVA. When I first got my learners permit, my first drive home w/ my dad was on the beltway & 95 in January after an ice storm.
With our current land use public transit, walking, and biking are not realistic alternatives. Cars are a necessity. And parents after 16 years parents are tired of providing taxi services for their offspring.
Fun story - I once designed a new community next to a community college. We had a lovely boulevard-ish street design as a new street leading to the college, with a landscaped median and a 10 foot travel lane in each direction. The traffic engineer for the city told us he wanted wider lanes, because young people are bad drivers. He pushed for 13 foot lanes. Seriously. So I said - "the idea is they're bad, so we're going to encourage speeding and recklessness?" He had a hard time answering that, but still he insisted on "wider lanes = safer."
The statistics are heartbreaking and difficult to deal with. As Gen x I have the same quandaries you do about the balance between saving lives and allowing kids to have some Independence.
But I think a major solution is being overlooked here, which is public transportation. Most teens have no choice but to drive if they're going to get where they want to go. They can't just hop a train in the suburbs and roll into downtown to meet their friends, or take a bus to a different neighborhood to hang out.
And I think it's important to acknowledge that for a lot of parents, the act of allowing their child to drive the car or even buying their teenager a car is a form of cultural initiation in America where car culture reigns supreme. I know that's a bigger problem, but still it strikes me as an important part of this whole issue.
Absolutely. Similar to older adults who for other reasons will reach a point they shouldn't be driving. Legalizing mixed-use neighborhoods opens up mobility options. Walking and biking are the easiest. But with safe and reliable service, the bus can act as an express sidewalk.
Oh, gah, so true. My father was one of those elders, and sometimes I think we were both lucky he died before we had to fight about me taking the keys away, because I'm not sure he would have forgiven me. They consider "not having a car" to be a form prison, and they aren't wrong. Without mobility options, they can easily end up trapped. :(
From personal experience, from having both teen and adult passengers in the car at 16-17, teens were no more distracting than adults. Ever. They were just, _in the car_. And I had many of BOTH at age 16-17. Your statistics on young passengers in the car, and night time driving, don't appear to prove ANYTHING. You're just saying these derogatory comments, without any actual proof or backup. While you didn't even prove nighttime driving is more dangerous than daytime driving for teens, EVEN IF IT WAS, it may be more dangerous for EVERYBODY ELSE as well! Teens are being denigrated like races and religious groups before them.
In the US, 5.1% of licensed drivers are under 20 years old, but they make up 12.6% of drivers in crashes. Child drivers have the highest involvement in crashes of any age group. Traffic violence is a leading cause of death for teens.
Studies consistently report young drivers are more likely to engage in high-risk behaviors such as speeding, following too closely, and distracted driving.
Still, emotions will prevent many people from making any meaningful change.
Totally flawed analysis. The issue is NEW DRIVERS. Not YOUNG DRIVERS!
The Constitution of the United States demands equal protection. Verne Troyer was 2.5 feet tall, and extended the break and the gas and drove!
"Children" demand an equal right to smoke cigarettes and own property. A contract or signature is a bill/proof of sale, nothing more. You can't sign your Constitutional human rights away,. We don't believe in contracts, - with the devil or otherwise (if there's a problem with big ticket purchases, then everyone should have so many days of recission). But sitting on a Jury and Voting are two totally different matters, -> you have to be 25 to serve in the U.S. House, and 35 to be President.
A lifetime is 7.5 years. Childhood is 3-7. An 8 year old is half child, half adult. 10.5 years old is an adult. 10.5-18 is your first adult lifetime. A toddler under age 3 is mentally incompetent, as someone who needs to be spoon fed. Guardian-Ward = Warden-Ward = Abuser-Abused = Hater-Hated = Hated back. Parents should be merely elder siblings to their children. This whole warden thing is an illegal human rights violation and has got to go. Wardens are at "war" with their wards. People are meant to be brought up, not belittled.
Children demand the equal rights of men.
New drivers do drive worse for their first year or so. However infringing on the rights of some because of the incompetence of others is also questionable. Maybe drivers education programs should just impress upon new drivers, that they are new drivers, and need to driver safer, for their first year. This could be from age 8 to 9.
The issue is New Drivers, not Young Drivers.
Just to stir things up…if we have decided that a sixteen year old boy is sufficiently mature to declare “I’m supposed to be a girl!” and consent to bodily mutilation, then driving a car is nothing.
I learned to drive in England and got my license at 17 (minimum age) after my first very stringent test. My driving instructor was an ex-big-city police driving instructor who exceeded the minimum public test-passing standards. My worst accident (at age 20) was when I rolled a friend's car in the dark in wet weather on an unfamiliar winding road ... obviously, in retrospect, youthful inexperience. I hadn't checked the car before agreeing to drive it - the tires were bald, not just worn. Lesson learned and a friendship lost; the car was written off. The only injury was to my pride and confidence. After coming to Saskatchewan, Canada, in winter, I passed the driver's test without prior instruction and was allowed to drive those giant, overpowered 1970s vintage American cars.
Now that I'm in my 80s, I conclude that much more stringent instruction and testing should be required before a limited licence is issued to a new driver in a new country, state, or province. The corollary is that much better public transit, perhaps in new forms, is essential to allow mobility for the young, elderly, and those who are no longer able or willing to drive.
Great piece. Completely agree 16 is far too young and in particular in densely populated urban areas. My daughter elected to hold off on driving for several years. She didn't get her license until a few months ago, aged 20. COVID was a factor. But she also didn't feel ready. I'm grateful she was self aware and took it slow. NOVA/DC driving is stressful even for the experienced. There is a cultural pressure at work for teen driving, coupled with the fact that is hard to get anywhere without a car, even in urban areas. Agree its a major defect in our car-centric infrastructure/planning.
Girls mature earlier than boys -- good that your daughter wasn't in a rush. I grew up in NOVA. When I first got my learners permit, my first drive home w/ my dad was on the beltway & 95 in January after an ice storm.
With our current land use public transit, walking, and biking are not realistic alternatives. Cars are a necessity. And parents after 16 years parents are tired of providing taxi services for their offspring.
Fun story - I once designed a new community next to a community college. We had a lovely boulevard-ish street design as a new street leading to the college, with a landscaped median and a 10 foot travel lane in each direction. The traffic engineer for the city told us he wanted wider lanes, because young people are bad drivers. He pushed for 13 foot lanes. Seriously. So I said - "the idea is they're bad, so we're going to encourage speeding and recklessness?" He had a hard time answering that, but still he insisted on "wider lanes = safer."
That's one of my favorite ways to make an engineers brain fizzle and pop like a broken robot.
The statistics are heartbreaking and difficult to deal with. As Gen x I have the same quandaries you do about the balance between saving lives and allowing kids to have some Independence.
But I think a major solution is being overlooked here, which is public transportation. Most teens have no choice but to drive if they're going to get where they want to go. They can't just hop a train in the suburbs and roll into downtown to meet their friends, or take a bus to a different neighborhood to hang out.
And I think it's important to acknowledge that for a lot of parents, the act of allowing their child to drive the car or even buying their teenager a car is a form of cultural initiation in America where car culture reigns supreme. I know that's a bigger problem, but still it strikes me as an important part of this whole issue.
Absolutely. Similar to older adults who for other reasons will reach a point they shouldn't be driving. Legalizing mixed-use neighborhoods opens up mobility options. Walking and biking are the easiest. But with safe and reliable service, the bus can act as an express sidewalk.
Oh, gah, so true. My father was one of those elders, and sometimes I think we were both lucky he died before we had to fight about me taking the keys away, because I'm not sure he would have forgiven me. They consider "not having a car" to be a form prison, and they aren't wrong. Without mobility options, they can easily end up trapped. :(