The driving age in many states has been raised and lowered fairly recently, and there is a debate going on in Virginia if their legal driving age should be raised.The legal age to get your learner’s permit is 15 and six months and to get your license you must be 16 and three months, but to be able to drive without any restrictions, you must be 18. The legal age varies depending on the state. In some states, you have to be 16 to get your license, and in others you have to be 21 to get your license. The age at which you can get your license all depends on which state you live in.

The legal driving age in Virginia should not be raised. There are many reasons for this, such as some parents won’t be able to get their kids to their after school activities or jobs, also, turning 16 doesn’t make you a legal adult, so you have to live under your parents and their rules which means the parents must give their children permission to drive. Finally, 16 is a good age to learn because it gives you a lot of guided practice with another permitted driver, so when the child does obtain their license, they will have had a lot of guided practice.

74.3 percent of students participate in an after school sport or activity, whether it be for their school, or not. This makes it hard for some working parents to rearrange their work schedule to drop their child off and pick their child up. 16 is the legal age children can get a job, which makes it  incredibly hard for some working parents to come drop off or pick up their children from their own job. If the kids can drive, the parents won’t have to worry about communicating with the kids about drop off and pick up time and dealing with the hassle of finding a carpool.
Many schools start later either on certain days, or every day and sometimes the child’s school schedule conflicts with the parents working schedule. I’m aware of this because I can’t get to school on Monday since we have a “Late Start Monday,” meaning we start an hour later. My parents have to either go into work late and stay longer, which means they can’t pick me up on time, or they have to drop me off at someones house and get them to take me. Not raising the driving age would take a lot of stress off of working parents.

16 is one of the best ages to learn because you aren’t a legal adult yet, meaning you still have to live under you parents rule, and if your parents don’t want you to get your license, they won’t let you. Most parents who don’t let their kids get their license either don’t think it would be safe, or that their own child is not ready for it yet. If their child isn’t ready, then their parents will keep them off the roads, making the roads safer. If the child was 18, and their parents still didn’t think that their child was ready, the child technically could get the license on their own since they are a legal adult now. This is a parent who won’t let her children get their license because they want to keep them safe, but don’t mind what the driving age is. She just simply doesn’t think that her own children are ready for the roads and wants to keep them, and the others on the road safe.

Those who wanted to raise the driving age took a survey and 47 percent of the voters voted that they wanted to raise the legal age to get a learner’s permit to 18 and a full license to 21. 21 is also the legal age to be able to drink which would statistically cause more drunk driving accidents. If the legal age stays at 16, the young drivers will have a lot of practice with driving so, if by the time they are 21 and are, for some reason drinking and driving, they will have had more practice driving and will make it just a little safer than if they got their license at 21.
Car accidents are the number one cause of death in the United States, but that doesn’t mean that it’s only teens who are the ones getting in accidents. More than half of the car accidents that occur are caused by drivers between the ages of 15 through 44. Therefore, raising the driving age would not lower the accident rate, it would just decrease the range of ages that car accidents occur. Most people think that it’s always the new drivers and teenagers who cause all the accidents, but statistics show that accidents occur most between 15 through 44 year olds.

If the state of Virginia is considering raising the driving age, they should first consider increasing the hours a driver must drive with a guardian in the car over the age of 21. Children with learner’s permits are required to drive a certain number of hours in daylight, and when it is dark. Raising the hours would mean more practice time and in the long run, overall better and safer drivers. Also, Virginia could make the test to get your license more challenging. The test shouldn’t be impossible, but if there is more detail, the kids taking the test will study harder, which will help them understand the rules of the roads and driving safety better. Overall, raising the number of hours a driver with a learner’s permit must drive, and making the test’s more detailed is a better solution than raising the age limit a person must be to get their license.