CLAY TURNER – Hoof Prints Staff

I believe that the driving age shouldn’t be raised. The only reason younger people have accidents is because they are less experienced. If we were to raise the driving age to eighteen, there would be more 18- and 19-year-old inexperienced drivers having accidents. Most likely these people would be in college at the time. Even if they weren’t in college they would need to drive more frequently than younger teenagers anyway because most of them would need a way to get to and from their job every day.

This  would hurt the economy because many more people would have to refuse job offers. Our labor market would then become less flexible therefore causing the costs of doing business to increase. Youth unemployment would be a bigger problem as well.

Also it would be very unfair to punish 16- and 17-year-olds for accidents of the past generations’ drivers. Besides that, these same kids have probably been looking forward to driving since they were little. It would sadden me to know that I robbed these kids of this one perk they’ve been looking forward to since their tween years.

We shouldn’t ban people that drive safely and abide by the rules. The people that don’t will most likely drive without a license or break the laws anyway.

Furthermore, I don’t think most would take the laws seriously. There are a lot of people that drink at an illegal age and they go undetected most of the time. What makes certain people think that these same people wouldn’t break the driving age law as well?

No problems would be resolved by raising the driving age. No one would take the law seriously and to be honest I think it would raise more issues than solve them. I don’t think the younger generation should be punished for the older generation’s mistakes.