P09146

Some people want the driving age put up to eighteen I think this is ridiculous. It should certainly be left at sixteen. Teenagers need a gradual increase in their responsibilities. Poor public transport in New Zealand means everyone relies on cars to get around and parents do not want to be driving their teenagers around until they are adults themselves.

In New Zealand you can buy alcohol at the age of eighteen if they raised the driving up to eighteen it would be disastrous. Teenagers wouldn’t know what to do first so they would probably do them both at the same time. It would be to much responsibility at once. Because you can get your licence at sixteen and buy alcohol at eighteen it gives teenagers time to adjust to these mature responsibilities. If you look at the statistics, 82% of drink driving is from individuals aged 23-42. Unlike what the media tells us the majority of drink-driving is not committed by youth but if the driving age was raised to eighteen more youth would drink and drive due to their new found freedom. It is clearly a dangerous mix for all us New Zealanders that use the roads if we just shoved the responsibilities of getting a licence and purchasing alcohol immediately when teenagers turn eighteen.

In New Zealand it is not as easy as just jumping on the closest train to school. Our relatively small population compared to similar sized countries such as Japan (population 127,960,000 people) and the UK (population of 62,008,048 people) means New Zealand doesn’t require mass public transport. James Sleep from the Youth Union movement believes “it will limit their access to education and other services particularly in rural areas. It will limit teenager’s access to these necessities due to New Zealand’s poor public transport, they won’t be able to drive to where they are required to be. This will severely disadvantage them in long term. People in more populated countries don’t even require their own vehicle because of very efficient and reliable public transport. Although New Zealand does have some public transport especially in larger cities such as Auckland, it is no where near to the standard of other more developed countries. It is essential for New Zealanders to have a vehicle to get around, so sooner New Zealanders learn to drive the better.

The people who want the driving age to be eighteen years old are the adults who think that all teenagers are reckless drivers, and are completely hypocritical because they would not have agreed with this at all if they were our age again. And once teenagers are eighteen they go off to university who would teach them then? Teenagers start getting jobs and take up more out of school activities once they turn sixteen. Because their parents often work themselves, it is impossible to take their teenagers everywhere. If the government did raise the age to eighteen it would put a lot more strain on parents to run their teenagers everywhere. It is just impractical for the driving age to be raised.

I stongly think that the driving age should be kept at sixteen and not raised to eighteen. This is because of New Zealands poor public transport and parents cant be taking their teenagers around forever. Teenagers need a gradual increase in responsibilities they should not go from having almost no responsibilities to being able to buy alcohol and drive a vehicle at the exact same time.