Will raising the driving...

Will raising the driving age to 18 reduce road deaths? IтЂ™m not sure. Most people of this age will simply ride motorbikes instead

The law says that 17-year-olds are permitted to enter full-time employment, go into business, buy their own homes, get married, have children, smoke and, if they join the British Army, kill or be killed in places such as Iraq and Afghanistan. And the State has few plans to restrict youngsters from continuing to indulge in these and other ‘grown-up’ activities. Generally, kids of this age and even younger are being given more, rather than fewer, opportunities to act like proper adults. For example, it has just been revealed that boys or girls as young as 16 have been recruited as police community support officers, with the ability to stop vehicles, issue fixed penalty notices and detain and search citizens.

But if a 17-year-old wants to drive himself to the house he owns or rents, the church where’s he’s getting married or his child is being christened, the tobacconist that sells him his fags, his own business premises or the barracks or police station where he’s reporting for State-sponsored work, he’ll almost certainly be prevented from doing so in future. This is because those in the corridors of power are speaking with growing enthusiasm about raising the driving age from 17 to 18.…and possibly even higher.

Good thing? Bad thing? I’m undecided. One half of me accepts that 17-year-old drivers, their passengers and other road users and pedestrians close to them are comparatively unsafe and much more likely to be involved in accidents than motorists in their thirties and forties, for example. But the other half of me says that I can’t agree to a ban on 17-year-olds behind the wheel. After all, I drove and owned a car at that age and it would be hypocritical if I said others should not be given the same opportunity. Surely we must try to improve the lives and freedoms of young people, shouldn’t we? And I’m not sure we’ll do that if we force them to wait longer before they can drive.

Is this really progress? And will this discrimination against 17-year-old drivers lead to a reduction in road accidents and deaths? I’m not sure. I think most people of this age will ride motorcycles if they’re not allowed to drive, and the chances of suffering injury or death are far higher on two wheels than four.

Besides, it’s not as if 17-year-olds are unsafe drivers, and 18-year-olds safe. Government figures prove that it’s drivers in their late teens and well into their twenties who represent the most vulnerable motoring group. Just one in eight driving licence holders is in the 17-25 bracket – yet a third of road deaths involve cars driven by someone aged 17-25. And even more hauntingly, half of all drivers killed on the road at night are between 17 and 25. So if politicians are really serious about this problem, I wonder if they might go as far as banning men and women from driving until they they’re a quarter of a century old. Another thing worries me. Whether the Government decides to raise the driving age or not, it’s already guilty of ageism against youngsters by telling them they’re subject to harsher drink drive laws than older drivers and stand a greater risk of losing their licences if they commit other traffic offences.

Again, this cannot be right, can it? Law breaking is law breaking, regardless of whether you’re young, middle-aged or old. And whether it’s your first year or your 50th as a motorist, you should be treated identically by the police, courts, Crown Prosecution Service and Government.