I am 19 years old, and I don’t know how to drive. Gears are mystifying. Internal combustion engines? I know they exist, but don’t even get me started on the indecipherable rules of the road. The point is I just don’t know how. So why, in the years since I could legally drive, did I never get a license to do it? How did I miss out on the quintessentially American rite of passage of learning to drive?
Most people who can’t drive by the time they go off to college come from a big city, where public transport and walking suited them just fine. I don’t. Others who don’t drive are intimidated by the thought of speed and only a fragile metal frame as protection. I’m not. I spent my high school years in Switzerland, where the drinking age may be sixteen, but the driving age is eighteen.
I graduated high school before I reached adulthood, so the fairly draconian driving laws, like the one that makes it illegal to even practice in a parking lot before age 18, stopped any ambition of driving back home. Sadly, according to Google Maps, the closest driving school to Georgetown is somewhere far away in Maryland. But while this inconvenience thwarts my hopes of getting a driver’s license any time soon, I’m not bitter about it. In fact, I think it’s for the best that I still don’t know how to drive, but that I’ve been able to legally drink since my junior year of high school, if only when back in Switzerland. I believe that the Swiss are entirely justified not just in allowing only adults to drive, but also in making the driving age come after the drinking age.
I can’t understand why American teenagers are allowed to drive at such a young age. Most haven’t stopped growing, or even developed past the awkward, klutzy stage, and yet they are deemed reliable enough to navigate the roads. The problem I have with 16-year-olds driving is that they aren’t mature—physically or mentally—and aren’t considered adults by Americans or most people in the world. If they aren’t legally mature, then they certainly shouldn’t be able to operate a heavy and dangerous piece of machinery. Driving should be left to those of us who are considered competent enough to vote and able enough to join the army. Your teenage years are when you’re supposed to be immature. I certainly was.
I’ll fully admit that, like most teenagers, I was an idiot at 16. I still don’t understand how people trusted me enough to babysit their children at that age, let alone drive a hulking mass of metal at high speeds every day. But I wasn’t just your average 16-year-old idiot—I was an idiot that was legally allowed to drink. Normal American teenagers line up at the DMV on their 16th birthdays; I went to a pub and had a beer as soon as school was done for the day. I’d like to think I was the happier kid. Sure, I still don’t really know which pedal does what, but I’ve had several years to get used to alcohol. I got through what I like to think of as “my really stupid age” before high school was even over—something that the antics of first-semester freshmen attest isn’t the case for most Americans. I know my limits, and I gladly put off knowing how to drive for the chance to be more responsible. By letting time elapse between the drinking and the driving age, there’s the chance to learn tolerance and responsibility with alcohol before driving is even on the horizon. You won’t see me driving drunk, because I can’t. And while not having a driver’s license for identification is a total pain, I’m happy to use my passport, complete with an embarrassing, sunburnt photo, because it means that I got the chance to learn responsibility ahead of the curve.
I’m staying here at Georgetown this summer, and I hope to be able to learn how to drive during breaks from organic chemistry. I certainly won’t be the best driver on the road, but I’m confident that I’ll at least more reliable than the fifteen-year-olds who are inevitably going to be in my driver’s ed class.
