These are two serious topics even though the title of this post isn’t, lol.

If we drop the drinking age to 18 and up the driving age to 18, this may cause a few problems don’t you think? Too much fun in one year I would say.

Seriously though, I don’t think I would be against either. The only downside to a 16 year old not being able to drive is that the job of a parent isn’t decreased before age 18. The kid is that much more dependent.

It’s really not about age, it’s about maturity. There’s no way that a law that treats categorizes by age will be fair or accurate. Whether a young adult is 16 or 18, when they get the freedom of being behind a wheel, many will go a little crazy. Unfortunately a lot don’t respect the right of driving or the consequences that it can bring until they experience it first hand. When I got behind the wheel, I was a little speed demon. It took a totaled car on my 16th b-day and quite a few speeding tickets before I learned to respect the road.

Then there is the drinking age. I agree that a lot of young deaths are created by alcohol because of kids running off from the wing of their parents to the world of the great big unknown and “freedom”. 18 year old’s are probably more prone to peer pressure than 21 year old’s, but not by a huge amount. When parents drink responsibly, more than likely so will their children, regardless of age.

Many kids, including myself, started to experiment with drinking around the age of 14 or 15. What are the biggest factors in who drinks? I’d say boredom and accessibility? I don’t know too many people that don’t take on the task of drinking and driving (hopefully not at the same time) that don’t test their limits or that it doesn’t take years to learn how to do both responsibly. Some never do.

So in the end, the age limit doesn’t really matter or have anything to do with what’s best for the child because every child is different. The factors that usually determine if these things have harsh consequences are the examples that children have been given as well as their individual overall maturity.

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