If you are serious about teenage driving, the Tribune should promote high school graduation as a prerequisite to obtaining a driver’s license. Non-graduates would wait until age 19 or 20 for a license.
The death statistics associated with teenage auto crashes do not include pedestrian deaths or serious injuries. I saw the broken bodies and lives ruined by automobile accidents while I was a pediatric surgeon here in Chicago. There would be more deaths if it were not for the advances in trauma surgery during the past years.
Requiring high school graduation for a license would go a long way to solving the dropout problem in our schools. Teenagers would be less obese and more fit if they had to walk or ride a bike.
Finally this would be one more way to wean people away from cars and our addiction to oil, and would reduce congestion on our highways.
