FOX35News-Mornings's Blog

I think they should raise the age up to 17 or 18. Kids today just get what ever they want and parents are too quick to just give it to them.

When we grew up, we had to work for the money to buy a car and we took better care of it, Parents weren't as quick to buy us cars. Knowing I had to pay for repairs, insurance, gas etc I was careful....We only had AM radios and if we were lucking we got 2-3 stations.

May how life has changed

I won't give you my opinion on this... but you might be able to figure it out. I lost three classmates to careless teenaged car crashes during high school.

Like almost everything the real issue seems to be parenting, or lack of it.

16 or 17 Either way make it very hard for them to get their license! Road test should be more than a 3 min ride around a parking lot!
I think driving school should be mandatory!
Also they need to watch movies about car accidents speeding,drunk driving ect

I'm fully supportive of raising the driving age to 18, or maybe even higher. Driving is a deadly game of chance when you're surrounded by people not taking their driving seriously.

But to answer the OP's first question -- it's been my experience that distracted teenagers are far outnumbered by soccer moms zipping around town while talking on the phone, and of course, paying much more attention to the phone call than to their driving.

And lastly, I agree with "nannie" -- when I was first in the service, before my first weekend leave in the States, I was shown a police film filled with images of the aftermaths of car wrecks -- nothing was censored or left out. One scene stayed with me all these years: two State Troopers carrying a bloody body out of a wreck -- it looked like every bone in the body had been broken -- it looked like they were carrying a long sack of potatoes.

Showing a film like that to every new driver (and maybe some not-so-new drivers too) would go a long way towards making people realize how potentially deadly the act of driving is.

I say allow them there learners permit at 16 until they are 17 but show those films about the aftermaths of car wrecks and make it mandatory for them to watch atleast one film once every six months until six months before there 18th birthday(3 times)so they never forget, because teenagers can be very ifluenced by other teens into doing something stupid that could never be undone.