Ed Lasky's article urging a minimum driving age of 21 has elicited many comments from readers. Some examples:

Bob Svoboda of Willis, TX writes

Thought—provoking article by Ed Lasky on teen drivers.  While I hadn't been thinking in terms quite so sweeping, how about a step in that direction?  Prohibit driving to public schools.  This would include parents driving their children to school.  Having lived in one of the traffic nightmare cities in the US, Atlanta, it was staggering to note the difference in rush hour traffic between school days and those days, weeks and months when school was out.  There is a perfect fallback that is already in place — school buses.  Mass transit — the libs should love it.  The savings not only in energy, but also time saved in the slightly less packed freeways and back roads, would be staggering.  And with fewer teenagers and parents on the road, the safety angle still plays.

New rule, you go to public school, you take the bus — period.  Maybe this is a good first step for Lasky's idea.

"A Mom anxiously awaiting for my middle son's license at 18" writes

Ed Lasky is disturbingly wrong. I am a mother of three boys aged 14, 16, and 21. My 21 year old has been driving responsibly, for four years. Since receiving his licence he has been a tremendous help to our family life. If you can join the military at the age of 18 then you have the right to obtain a drivers licence. If the truth be told it's the 30, 40, 50, and 60 year olds who frivolously drive around. They are also more prone to drink and drive. My son and his friends would not even entertain the idea of drinking and driving, they leave the car at home and use car service. Open your eyes Ed, there are irresponsible drivers of all ages!

Steven Dugger writes:

I tend to be skeptical when someone suggests a new law as a remedy for a decline in moral values.  It's true that cars have probably enabled all kinds of irresponsible behavior that's led to a lot of social problems in our country.  But the same could be said about the telephone, the TV, the internet, the computer and on and on and on. 

I suppose we could require that everyone be forced to live at a 19 century level of technology,  until they've demonstrated that they've got the morals necessary to handle the freedom that our technology gives us.

Hmmmm......  No, I don't think so.

I don't think that there's an easy solution to this.  But I do know that the majority of teenagers will not end up pregnant, alcoholic or criminal.  That implies that there are ways to raise children (even with the temptations of technology) that will lead to them being productive adults.  I have a 3 year son, and I'm going to make sure that I'm involved in his life so that I can use those methods to make him a productive adult.  In the meantime, I'll be thankful if you don't clutter up my life with anymore burdensome and futile laws.  We got enough of those already.