A bill to raise the driving age to 18.

First of all, when society has raised the driving age even to 17, overall rate of teens killed in crashes in New Jersey has been consistently lower than in some nearby states according to various studies. Why shouldn't we raise it to 18 to reduce even more deaths? The dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex, which consider consequences, does not fully mature until at the age of 25. The reason that the driving age isn't 25 is that driving is necessary to go to college at the age of 18. The age of majority indicates the end of adolescence and people who reach this age are regarded as adults and are held to be responsible for their actions. Therefore 18 is better than 16, because people who are 18 are regarded as adults and have more experience than 16-year-olds with a more developed dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex. I have never proposed a strict system in which one can only get a license at age 18. By raising the driving age to 18, I meant by learners will still be granted their provisional license from 16 or 17, but will need a year to pass a beefed-up test, which means the minimum age at which a new driver could realistically go out on his or her own will be 18. The people under the age of 18 will have to be supervised by an adult such as a legal guardian or parent. "When the individual could show that they are mature and a capacity to drive responsibly," means that children and teenagers aged 10-14 can be mature and show that they can drive with responsibility. If such a system was implemented, I would use it as my advantage to learn how to drive at the age of 10-14. I'm sure our society wouldn't like the idea of people ages 10-15 driving on the streets. Anyone can show maturity at any age, but it takes more than 1/2 of the people with large amounts of maturity to lower or keep the driving age. "Risk statistics based on age seems overall a rather lousy way to give a basis for qualification for things that very widely based on individual." Does that mean that very intelligent or mature teenagers ages 10-14 can be trusted with adult rights that include binding contract, buying stocks, voting, buying and/or consuming alcoholic beverages, driving motor vehicles on public roads, and marrying without obtaining consent of others or any restrictions? Source: http://en.wikipedia.org... "We could just implement a brain scan for every individual attempting to get a license to see if they are developed enough to qualify." In theory, it could work. However, Giedd says that ethical crossroad is too radical to seriously consider today. "We are just at the threshold of this," he says. Do you think every parent is going to agree to have their teenagers take a brain scan to determine whether he or she was neurologically fit to drive? What if the brain scan says that his or her brain isn't developed enough? How will their parents feel about the results? Ignoring the ethical crossroad, if the brain scans were implemented today, there would be no reason to raise the driving age to 18. But we can't because of ethics, and we need to raise the driving age to 18 now to save lives, until the day when brain scans can be implemented. Source: http://www.usatoday.com... Anecdotal evidence is unreliable, considered untrustworthy or untrue, or does not warrant the conclusion. According to your personal anecdote, you have no friends or relatives that can drive the car for you. Your situation is reasonable except with the fact of the age. What if you were 8-12 and your mother became sick? What if you were a baby and your mother was so weak after driving? The same circumstances could apply to any age and it seemed that you didn't seek for any help. Putting gas in the tank is only part of the cost of having an automobile. Rates for teens are higher for a variety of reasons, including a lack of experience on the road. Insurance as a concept is based on the idea of sharing expenses among a group of individuals where the risk is calculable. Motor vehicle crashes are the leading cause of death for teenagers. That factor naturally translates into higher rates for youthful drivers. Therefore if the driving age was raised to 18, auto insurance rates would be lowered for all drivers. Source: http://www.superiorcarinsurance.com... I didn't intend the global warming argument to be a contention, because it is ultimately not a reason to deny individuals who could handle driving a car the ability to do so. However, you would notice that we don't have the most fuel efficient cars invented yet and cars that are the most fuel efficient are not relatively cheap. Less cars on the road, less air pollution, might slow down global warming. May not stop global warming, but it will help. "Heavy drinking is encouraged and in which peer pressure is on to also encourage faster driving then we are more likely to have individuals conditioned to drive poorly." That is exactly the reason why we need to raise the driving age to 18, because adults are more mature and can deal with peer pressure better than teenagers age 16 or under. That's also why teens often seem more impetuous than adults. In making decisions, they rely more on the parts of their brain that control emotion. Source: http://www.usatoday.com...