Ponderable

Here's a quick read from The Onion. I'll wait here while you go read it.

Are you back? Good. As with everything in The Onion (see prior post on the Alpha Yam that refused to be candied), that was satire. Still, as with most good satire, it brings up an interesting point. Why do we trust 17-year-olds with a two-ton chunk of steel (or whatever it is they make cars out of now), but not their own bodies?

I was not having sex at the age of 17. However, I was driving a car then, a red Volvo sedan. In one memorable instance, on my way to pick up a dozen eggs, I drove that car into the back end of a Ford Taurus with "Happiness is Being a Grandparent" license plate frames. Fortunately, no one was hurt and I didn't even get a ticket. Apparently, the responding officer considered my hysterical sobbing, situated in the Venn Diagram intersection of the sets "Just rear-ended a grandma" and "I just crashed the car...I am sooooooo dead," evidence that my lesson was well learned.

Even more fortunate, my parents were of the opinion that accidents happen, and it was more of a matter of when I would hit something, not if I would. Plus, I think they were just happy that this time, they did not get the news by way of an EMT who, fed up with the receptionist at my father's workplace parroting the company policy against personal phone calls, finally snapped at her, "This is the paramedics. His children have been in an accident. Get him on the phone." We were both fine, but needed some parental guidance regarding what to do about the Pinto we had just totaled. (Note to self: in retrospect, it seems I should avoid Fords).

Among my cohort in high school, car accidents were not unheard of. Neither was teen pregnancy. The accident rate was probably about the same for both. Now, while rear-ending a Taurus is not in the same league of life-altering events as getting pregnant, being involved in a fatal accident is, and I knew a couple of people near my age who were involved in those (only one as the fatality). Yet the grownups do not, for the most part, flip a gasket and insist that teenagers should not be taught to drive responsibly, simply because there is a chance that they could hurt or kill themselves or others. Driving is an essential skill for independent living as an adult unless you live in Manhattan, and best to have them learn and make mistakes while parents can help pick up the pieces when, as will inevitably happen with anything with a learning curve, accidents happen.

Sex is no less essential than driving in adult life. Why then, do we trust teenagers with the car, but not the driver?