In the UK you can apply for a provisional driving license when you’re 15 years and 9 months old. However, you can’t start driving until you’re 17, but is this still too young? Do you think the legal driving age should be raised to 18?
In a bid to cut accidents involving young motorists, many believe that the legal driving age should be raised and that learner drivers should be prohibited from taking their driving test until they are 18, allowing minors to be well educated and to develop maturity.
Maybe this is just simple science that the adult brain doesn’t fully mature until a person reaches the age of 18 and perhaps raising the minimum driving age would be a good step to furthering road safety. It could be argued that many accidents are caused by careless young drivers who are immature and irresponsible. Therefore raising the minimum age at which people can drive may help to reduce this, preventing more children from getting hurt or even killed and helping to ensure that people are responsible enough to drive safely.
Of course, we all want to improve road safety, but does that mean we have to discriminate against 17-year-olds who can go to war but can’t drive? Many people may take the view that the legal driving age should not be altered and it should remain the same because it is fair. To change this could be considered to be unfair as not all teens are considered to be bad drivers, and driving is a real benefit for young people as it provides freedom, independence, and responsibility.
Perhaps the legal driving age should remain the same given that the majority of teenage driving accidents are caused by either inexperience or how someone is taught to drive in the first place, which proves that no matter the age when an individual is first learning to drive, they are more prone to either causing or being involved in an accident.
One argument against raising the minimum legal driving age is that maturity isn’t based on somebody’s age as there are irresponsible 18, 21, and even 50-year-olds. Therefore, the question that arises is whether or not it is fair to punish those responsible minors by raising the legal driving age.
With many easy solutions to what some would consider being a temporary problem, changing the driving age could be considered as the equivalent of starting the entire process over and a problem that is likely to occur over and over. Put simply, a person’s age and whether the driver is a minor are irrelevant. It is the person behind the wheel and their driving experience that will affect whether or not an accident will occur and therefore, the legal driving age should stay the same.
