What if 14 years old was the new driving age?
5/6/2025 11:34 pm | Share to: 
This is an idle thought as I unwind for the night and is not something I am making the case for. This is a complicated issue and there is a lot of stuff to consider and think about.
The driving age was set decades ago when technology and growing up were very different. I wonder what would happen if we dropped the driving age to 14 (using high school as the gate age.) Given the technological development, video gaming, teenagers are much more advanced and cars are (in many ways) antiquated technology compared to computers.
It would result in more fatal crashes both as a simple by-product of more drivers being on the road, and of course of the cultural shift for the younger drivers on the road. Far less important, but an issue to think about none-the-less: school infrastructures are not built for supporting this additional influx of drivers. Heck, I was in high school and the parking spaces on campus couldn't even serve both seniors and juniors. So, adding freshmen and sophomores is not something schools can handle.
As an upside, it enables employment (for those families in desperate need of it but which have excess vehicles). I am not pushing for rollback of child labor protections at all, but acknowledging some kids at 14 years old already do work, and more would if transportation was available. Also the added drivers would stir the economy through additional demand for vehicles. If 1 in 500 of the drivers has the means or family able to purchase a car (new or used), based on an estimate that there are 4 million 14 year olds in the US today, that puts 8,000 additional vehicles on the road.
Anyways, just a rambling thought before I crawl into bed.
