Age is not an accurate measure of maturity
Isaac Chambers recently wrote a column exploring the relationships between responsibility and privilege, as well as those between age and maturity. I had mixed reactions to the column, but it contained one argument that I strongly agree with, quoted here:
“That’s not to say that all people over the legal age granting someone a privilege are responsible enough to deal with that privilege, or by the same token, that all people under the legal age aren’t responsible enough. There are plenty of people over 17 who make stupid sexual decisions and plenty of people over the age of 21 who drive under the influence.”
It is a constant source of irritation to me that age is used to reflect such things as responsibility and capability. Sure, people are bound to become more responsible as they age, but the speeds at which they do so can be radically different. If a 13 or 14-year-old who has been driving from an early age shows up at the DMV fully capable of acing the test and making intelligent decisions on the road asking for a license, they’ll leave empty-handed because, since the time they were born, the Earth has completed fewer than 16 revolutions around the sun.
However, if a 16-year-old walks in and shows that they have the basic ability to operate a vehicle, they can walk away with a shiny new license, and as soon as they hit the legal age for drinking, they can celebrate by crashing their car into a tree. Many young drivers only see getting a license as a right, and not in any way a responsibility. As an extreme example, I’ve heard of people who drive down Springfield Avenue with their eyes closed as a test of fortitude.
Such an impersonal system as the one in place to issue drivers’ licenses is, of course, far from being the main cause of accidents, but it has clear inherent flaws, based around the notion that any given 20-year-old is more responsible than someone three years younger. Some of the age limits imposed by legislators are remarkably fallible; minors can get their hands on alcohol if they’re reasonably determined. One proposed solution has been to raise the age limits for driving and buying alcohol, but this only antagonizes minors further, both the ones who are responsible enough to handle whatever it is they’re being denied and the ones who aren’t.
This situation is an excellent example of the ethical paradoxes that our government faces. On the one hand, granting inherent-risk privileges such as the right to drive should be done on a highly personal basis to ensure the safety of the recipient and the people who could potentially be affected by their actions. However, as the level of individual attention increases, the operation becomes increasingly expensive and time-consuming. Also, there is virtually no way to predict how a person would react in a situation; it would be a bit much to conduct full psychological exams only to produce largely irrelevant results. Striking a balance between being personal and being practical should be the government’s aim.
— Andrew Lovdahl