Well, I'm generally against changing voting laws to benefit a party.  I guess the real question is whether or not we want educated, informed voters, or just numbers of voters.

As a complete derail, my personal opinion on the matter is that everything ought to happen at 18.  Driving, voting, drinking, cigarettes, porn, whatever.  If you're an adult at 18, then you can do anything any other adult can do.

Well i agree with that but we all know they won't lower the drinking age, it would be more likely for them to lower the voting age, hell it would be more likely for them to lower the age of when you become an adult before lowering the drinking age. i feel that if students were able to vote at a younger age they would pay more attention to what is going on in the country, i know most of my friends and me would sit in school and either we would talk politics or we would talk about blowing stuff up. so i mean many of us are more aware of what is going on around this country than alot of adults are.  so i cant exactly say it would be bad...

Have you looked at accident statistics?  Do you have any idea how many accidents would be prevented by keeping 16 and 17 year olds from behind the wheel?

"Drivers between the age of 15 and 20 accounted for only 6.9 percent of all licensed drivers, but were involved in 16.0 percent of all accidents and 14.0 percent of all fatal accidents. The fatality rate for drivers 16 - 19 is about 4 times as high as the rate for drivers age 25 - 69."

http://www.central-insurance.com/docs/cmaaccid.htm

You can get a learners permit at 15, which allows you to drive with a parent or guardian.  At 16, whether you got your learners permit or not, you can drive by yourself by passing one written test and one road test.

Personally, I think drivers licenses ought to cost at least a thousand dollars.  The age ought to be 18, and they should be provisional for five years.  If you get more than, say, three violations in the first five years, you have to go through the whole licensing process again, at added expense.  I think the government ought to encourage mass transit by making driving into more of an earned thing.  I haven't really thought the whole thing out in detail, but I think it's too easy to get a license here.

I did some digging about trolleys once.  Turns out that along the east coast, many of the trolleys were bought by.... (care to guess?)... car companies.  After a few years of operation to throw the scent off, the car companies systematically shut down the trolleys.

The problem with restricting driving is if you live in certain areas, it's almost impossible to get anywhere without a car. Public transportation is virtually non-existant around here. Making getting a license expensive is one of the worst ideas I ever heard in my life - the last thing we need is another advantage for people with a lot of money.

I don't have a car or a license. I get around just fine. I live in Canada, one of the most spcaed-out and least densely populated countries in the world.

The word 'bicycle' comes to mind, though honestly, I haven't gone and picked-up one of those.

Car pooling works wonders. So does walking. So does public transit. The myth that absolutely everyone somehow needs a car is a bad joke.

The idea behind making licensing expensive isn't to consolidate another activity into the realm of the wealthy - it's to make you actually feel accountable. If a person had to spend a thousand dollars (or, say, even five hundred dollars) on their license, they wouldn't likely be too eager to lose it and have to go through the whole licensing procedure and expense again.

To really fix it, though, we'd also have to fix a number of related problems in the judicial system (...but I think that's going beyond the scope of this discussion), since you'd probably otherwise just get a bunch of people shrugging and driving around without proper licenses.

How does it work?

http://www.icbc.com/Licensing/

Learners -> Novice -> Full-fledged driver.

Still a few loopholes and bizarre rules, but it's a start.

You read a book and take a written test to get your learners (class 7a).  You wear an L on your car when you drive for 12 months (may be reduced if you have formalized approved training).  After the time you take a test to get your class 7 licenses (novice) which restricts time of day, and is essentially a 'no tolerance' license.  you can't have any alcohol in your system, be even 50% responsible for accidents, or have any kind of hits against you in anyway, and can only have 1 passenger.  You wear an N on your car and you hold that status for 24 months (18 if you have approved training).  The N and L are displayed to all other drivers as, essentially, a warning.

We've seen a 16% reduction in accidents since it's institution, Ontario something like 31% and Nova Scotia was around 15% as well I think.

Well the closest mass transit comes to me ever, at all,  is about 12 miles away. How's someone going to ride a bike home anywhere more than a couple blocks after work? When I was working I could barely stand up at the end of an 8 hour shift. Also, with making them expensive - who would drive trucks, buses, etc? - People who do that for a living don't come from wealthy backgrounds. A lot of people who aren't from the US don't realize most of us - except living in big cities don't live within walking distance of work - there's plenty of people who drive more than an hour each way to work. I rural/small areas there is literally NO public transportation - unless you want a taxi to come from the city (about $60 before they even pick you up at your house - then the per mile charge.) I plenty of areas having a car is just about a necessity - not having one is an extreme inconvenience at best. How would people get their groceries even if they have access to public transportation? Most people I know fill their trunk up when they go to the store - no way to carry on foot/bike and public transportation won't do that. The only way they could do anything like this is to make extreme changes in American society. I personally feel getting a license should be easier in some ways - the hardest part for most people is parallel parking, which shouldn't be a requirement ( I got mine while they weren't requiring it or never would have passed - the cop actually passed me even though I technically failed - the thing that brought me down was driving too slow - I was 18 - of course that's before the state took it because of my health.

I agree with your entire post, Matt.

I'm not sure exactly what area of the US you live in, but I've lived in the suburbs of Chicago my entire life, and I think our mass transit system is apalling.

Don't get me wrong, there's plenty of ways to get around in the city - the el, public buses, and more taxis than actual cars on the road. But once you leave the city, you're on your own. Most suburbs have limited, if any, public bus service - my hometown has one bus stop that drops workers from the city off at 9 am and picks them up at 6 pm. That's pretty much the norm.

There's no convenient way to get from one suburb to another. I currently attend school in Evanston, an hour's drive from my hometown of Hinsdale. The only way to use public transportation to get home would be to take the el into the city, walk to union station, and then take the metra train to Hinsdale, and walk the last mile to my house - the entire trip would take nearly 3 hours.

I live 2 blocks from campus, my internship job is on campus, and I live a mile from the commercial district of town, so I usually am able to just walk or bike to wherever I need to go. But for grocery shopping, I'm still forced to use the car, because I like to get the big fridge packs of soda, which are impossible to transport on a bike. (I installed a basket on the back of my bike, so that small errands would be possible.)

I'd love to see an expansion of public transportation systems, especially in the suburbs, because I think this is the area that uses cars the most.

And about the age thing - I don't think you'd have very many socially conscious 16-year-olds voting for independent parties. Most likely, it would just be an extension of Obama-rama, with teens just voting for whoever their friends vote for. I do not think I had enough political knowledge to be adequately prepared to vote when I was in high school.

Well Matt, you and the local Goddess have an excellent case for owning a vehicle, then. 'Nobody should own a car' is one extreme, and not what I was going for. The things is, right now, we're in the opposite extreme, where everyone seems to think they should own two or so cars.

The middle ground, where people like yourself who (I presume) have proven themselves to be responsible drivers and actually need a personal auto have the privilege of owning and operating one and everyone else gives their head and shakeand seriously considers whether or not they need such a machine, is what I'd like.

Here in the UK everything is 18. Driving is 17, although this is set to change to 18 to prevent accidents. The age of sexual consent is 16, which I think is fair, at 16 you're of an age where you're mature enough. Even then most people don't exactly go out and fuck each other. I was 17 and in a relationship, and I was the first among my close friends. I think if it were much younger than 16 there would be problems. I don't think that consenting 16 and 17 year olds should be prevented from having sex if they want to.

As for the voting age I think 18 is probably about right. I mean I was interested in politics from fairly young, but I'm an exception to the rule. Most people younger than 18 though don't give a shit or are too immature.

Most definitely.  It's frightening to think that people can drive by themselves at age 16.  I mean, 16-year olds aren't exactly renowned for their responsibility or good decision making.