The age at which a teenager may obtain a license to drive is reasonably uniform across North America - most jurisdictions license at age 16. However, there has been a recent trend toward modifying the age of full licensure with the adoption of a new system called graduated licensing, which involves a phased entry to full licensure. This trend raises the question of why minimum licensing ages were introduced in the first place and, perhaps more importantly, why particular ages were selected. This study examines the origins of, and rationale for, minimum driver licensing age laws. Findings suggest that the introduction of age restrictions at the beginning of the 20th century was motivated largely by efforts to protect the public from young drivers, who increasingly were being recognized as a problem on the highways, as well as to protect adolescents and prepare them for adulthood. However, there was nog consensus regarding the optimum age for licensing. Age determination in driver licensing essentially was arbitrary; some states selected 16, while others selected 18. By the mid-to-late 1920s, the need for uniformity in the control and regulation of drivers emerged as a critical issue in the United States, and 16 became the recommended legal age. Since then, a minimum licensing age of 16 has become the norm in the United States. (A)
Abstract