If the teen driving age was to be moved up to eighteen years old, like some adults are advocates of, there are many advantages and disadvantages that would come with this new law. I could personally see both sides of this decision, but I would have to lean towards keeping the age at sixteen for receiving a license.

I know for sure, based on my own experience, that parents are very thrilled when they do not have to make multiple trips back and forth and to and from school. The parents are saving so much time in their days without having to transport their children to school functions for an extra two years. If the driving law was happened to be raised to eighteen, for high school students, that would mean that another two whole school years and two more summers worth of activities would have to be given transportation!

Adults are saying that the driving age should be upped to eighteen. They are mostly coming from the position of “teenagers will be more responsible by the time they are eighteen instead of only sixteen.” This honestly may be the case for some teenagers, but for the others there could possibly be a different scenario. They may be responsible from the get-go of getting their license because of laws and restrictions set by their own parents. They also may not really be responsible at all because they are still teenagers whether they are sixteen years old or eighteen years old! On the flip-side of this, some teenagers may start off being very cautious and responsible and then progress towards being less responsible because they get more comfortable behind the wheel. Each teenager is going to be different from the next, so the point of not being responsible enough is not really a completely valid point.

I think that the driving age should be kept at sixteen because I do not think it’s necessarily safe to just be getting their license and trying to drive to and from their college. Most of the time when college students have to drive home, it is during inclement weather. If we were to recently be getting a license and then driving in difficult situations, this sounds like a recipe for disaster to me! Some birthdays are not until very late in the year, so by the time some teenagers are able to get their licenses, they are already half-way through their sophomore year…in college!

If I were a parent, I could understand some of the reasons why they might want to change the driving age from sixteen to eighteen. Things like being able to drive on dates, driving to prom, and being able to drive to basketball and football game are all part of the fun of high school and being a teenager! Sure sixteen year olds can get in accidents, but eighteen years olds can too! Getting a driver’s license is all a part of the “high school experience,” and personally I don’t think that driving at sixteen is not something that is “broke,” so if it is not broken…don’t fix it!