Too Young to Die
Kerre Woodham comments on the latest deaths of young people on the road and asks when a government will have the moxie to put the driving age up. I wouldn’t be holding my breath, Kerre. It seems fairly easy for Governments to lower the threshold age, regardless of the predicted and predictable consequences, but it is subsequently almost impossible to gain the political will to raise it again.
Witness the drinking age. All (and I mean all) the evidence pointed to the fact that lowering the drinking age to 18 would increase the use of alcohol in school-age children and the number of alcohol-related presentations to emergency departments. That did not stop our illustrious politicians. After nine years of twelve- and fourteen-year-olds presenting dangerously intoxicated to emergency departments, you would think it high time that the age was raised. And yet the issue keeps being kicked from one report to another. This issue seems to be live again right now, but I expect it to disappear back into the system.
There is strong evidence that the risk assessing mechanism in the frontal cortex does not fully develop until the early twenties for girls and the mid-twenties for boys. This would suggest that the earliest age for a full license should be 20, with a provisional or restricted license obtainable from 18 years. Of course, logically, that should be extended to 25 and 23 for boys, but I can see that gender specific licensing is not likely to be a flyer…
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Jul 5 09 3:50 pm
Put the two things together and ask, Does the minimum legal drinking age save lives? The short answer is no.
See the paper with that title by Jeffrey Miron and Elina Telelbaum in the “Economic Inquiry”, 47(2), April 2009.
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Jul 5 09 4:10 pm
Paul:
While I agree that a minimum drinking age does nothing to save lives, not having one (or having one that is too low) definitely has social costs and health care costs.
Jul 5 09 4:27 pm
Its a bit ironic that a fellow of 18 can own a cell phone, text, drink, drive, vote.. usually all at the same time.
Yet the same chap will happily live with his parents to age thirty until some university educated female will drag him by the ear off to a flat where she can institute some controls over him.
JC
Speaking from experience, JC?
Jul 5 09 5:00 pm
MacDoctor: Just as long as you don’t ask BERL to workout these costs!!!
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Now why would I not want to get marxist manipulators to work out my costs?
Jul 5 09 9:52 pm
Speaking from experience, JC?
Err, not quite. I divorced my parents at 18, filched my bride from under the noses of high society and carried her off in the Mk 11 Zephyr to live in a one house forest at the end of Nowhere.
She always enjoyed a good frost there when the toilet water froze.. and the race to hospital on a metal road when the contractions were a minute apart.
JC
Your wife is a tolerant woman…
Jul 6 09 10:36 am
“There is strong evidence that the risk assessing mechanism in the frontal cortex does not fully develop until the early twenties for girls and the mid-twenties for boys”
Perhaps this is nature’s way of ensuring that young hunters took the risks necessary to feed their clan. We have not bred that particular evolutionary trait out yet.
Jul 6 09 1:23 pm
Actually I’m not sure that all the evidence points to lowering the drinking age having an effect on road mortality rates. There has been a fairly consistent econometric literature that shows that when you start factoring in changes to driving distances, car safety features, differences in enforcement levels, the drinking-age variable drops out as influencing road-mortality.
If young people can afford cars more easily, the cars lack safety features, petrol is cheap (so travel-distances increase) and nobody bothers with enforcement, you get an increase in road mortality. Many of the successful reductions in road mortality that have occurred after an increase in drinking-age, were part of a package of other ‘tough enforcement’ measures. It beggars belief somewhat to argue that it is the shift in drinking age, but not increases in enforcement that are responsible for such reductions.
The problem with younger people drinking has been a trend that started before the drinking-age was lowered, and has continued since. I’m not sure what policy interventions will work here to be honest.
I note that when the drinking age was discussed, the actual prediction was that more alcohol would be consumed. In fact, alcohol consumption has on a per capita basis) tended to trend down (IIRC). Hence, the shift in target by wowsers from a general increase in alcohol consumption, to a focus on binge drinking. Don’t admit you were wrong, just change the target…
Anyway, it’s not an easy issue to get around.
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Jul 6 09 2:02 pm
Interesting issue.
I found a list of driving ages by country here (http://www.easydriveforum.com/showthread.php?t=611). We tend to be lower than many other countries (Australia 16-18 depending on state, Canada 16, UK 17, Europe 17-18. US is 16 in most states (see http://www.2pass.co.uk/ages2.htm ) but some states allow learners at 15 and in some cases even 14 (in South Dakota 14 year olds can get a full licence!).
Just because 15 year olds have some accidents shouldn’t on its own be sufficent to raise the age, as adults have accidents too. And they might have a higher crash rate not because they are young, but because they are new to driving.
While I do see a possible case for raising the age, it should not be a first resort, and empirical evidence should be required showing that it will lead to fewer crashes (perhaps examining data from the above countries for all drivers 14-25 (it is important we don’t just look at 15-18 year olds, as in those countries with 18 as driving age, there would be no 18 year old drivers, and the 18-21 group might have more accidents as they are new to driving.
Until convincing evidence is avaliable that raising the age will produce significently fewer accidents, we should keep the age where it is.
I will write about the drinking age latter.
Jul 6 09 2:22 pm
Twenty years ago and more a population of 3 million had around 800-1000 road fatalities per year; now 4 mill have 400 or so, and thats despite the drinking age coming down. What happened?
We got older is what happened. Our median age moved from mid 20s to 36/37, and we are more likely to understand consequences of actions. And despite occasional disparaging of yoof, they are now surrounded by more older people and some of that caution (intolerance?) has rubbed off in the form of road statistics.
Roads have also improved and urban spread has made many of the killer rural roads 50-80km zones, and more people live in those zones than formerly. We are talking a lot of demographic, social, economic and infrastructure change here.. even the massive importation of used Jap cars has improved the age and safety of the car fleet.
Theres also another factor, and thats the very strong corelation now between serious road offences and general crime. Stop an offending driver and there’s a good chance you’ve got a crim or a recidivist drink/driver. Rather than hammer the yoof specifically we might be better off jailing those who have this specific link. That could lower road fatalities by more than 25%.
JC
Jul 6 09 7:29 pm
Chthoniid: I’m not sure that all the evidence points to lowering the drinking age having an effect on road mortality rates.
As far as I am aware, you are perfectly correct. I was using the drinking age as an example of how easy it is to move the age limit down but not up. You will note that I made no mention of road fatalities or even the total consumption of alcohol.
I think you will find that the incidence of 16 year olds drinking and getting drunk is now four or five times higher than it was. Certainly the number of presentations to ED involving drunk teenagers has more than tripled at the EDs in which I have worked.
I do agree with JC, though, that the fatality rate for teenage MVAs is multifactorial and quite complex. There is certainly more to the issue than the development of frontal lobes. On the other hand, the medical evidence supports a higher driving age. It would be prudent to examine the relevant data to see if a higher driving age does indeed reduce MVA fatalities.