Raise the Driving Age to Reduce/Eliminate North Carolina Auto Accidents?
What if we raised the driving age to 24? How would that impact the number, size, and scope of our North Carolina car accident problem?
A suggestion like this would probably lead you to two immediate thoughts:
• Of course raising the driving age by 8 years would reduce accidents, probably by a ton!
• Such a proposal would never fly – and wouldn’t even be a good idea because of productivity loss and the straitjacket-like effect it would have on our state.
First of all, these are understandable thoughts to have.
But second, we might want to consider them more critically.
Yes, if we spiked the driving age significantly, there would be fewer drivers on the road. That in and of itself would probably lead to fewer overall accidents. Also, as drivers get older, they demonstrate more mature judgment and behave in a less impulsive fashion. On the other hand, drivers need to learn driving skills at some point. Teenage drivers don’t exactly have a great reputation for safety and stability and agility in crises. But it takes time to learn any skill. If we bumped up the driving age to 24 (or 21 or whatever), then we would probably have a lot more incompetent 21 or 24-year-old drivers on the road than we do right now. Plus, the temptation for underage drivers to get behind the wheel would be enormous – the amount of cheating would be probably huge and those cheaters would not have the benefit of standard driver ed courses.
So even if there were fewer overall kids driving, the kids who did get behind the wheel would probably be way more dangerous on average than the kids driving now. So you may not see substantial reduction in accidents – or as substantial as you might initially expect.
As far as the second point is concerned, you might be surprised at how easy it is to create social changes – like raising or lowering the voting age, driving age, etc. But there has to be a reason for the shift – and that reason has to be urgent and compelling and simple enough for a large group of people to get behind and support. With respect to the bumping up of the minimum driving age to 21 or 24, there just doesn’t seem to be a groundswell of support in that direction. Safety advocates should therefore spend their time searching for other methods and strategies and tactics to reduce North Carolina auto accidents.
If you’ve been injured or have suffered damages, talk to the team at the Law Offices of Michael A DeMayo today.
More Web Resources:
Should we raise the minimum driving age?
The law of unintended consequences
