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Jan 3/05: A new year now, and we've gone through the annual Holidays ritual of
drunk driving scares (google
news it), the busy season for MADD in publicity and fundraising. In my
last entry I mused about government social and economic
engineering, an instance of which being drunk driving (see another article on it
here:
The Continuing Problem of Drunk Driving). The Washington Post gets
into the seasonal spirit with this article:
European Laws Place Emphasis On the Driving, Not the Drinking
PARIS - The accident bore the familiar details of a drunken-driving tragedy. Six
young people, age 16 to 20, had been out late at a club. On the long ride toward
home early on a Saturday morning, their small car smashed into a bridge pillar,
killing everyone. Witnesses said the driver, 20, appeared drunk as he left the
club. The Nov. 20 accident in Sausheim, a town in eastern France, shocked people
across the country. But in a society in which the legal drinking age is 16, the
resulting public debate focused not on how to keep alcohol from young people,
but on how to enforce highway rules more strictly and crack down on errant
drivers.
News coverage took particular note that the driver had no license or insurance.
That response underscored a fundamental difference between U.S. and European
approaches to drunken driving among young people: Americans have raised the
drinking age to 21; Europeans keep it low but put faith in stiff rules and
regulations. While most European countries issue driver's licenses at age 18,
the difficulty of passing the test, high insurance costs and wide use of trains
and buses all mean that young people generally begin to drive much later than in
the United States. "They start drinking at 16, but they cannot drive until they
are 18," said Florence Berteletti Kemp, a communications officer in Brussels,
Belgium, for Eurocare, a private group that campaigns to reduce Europeans'
alcohol consumption. "I think in the U.S., there is an expectation to have your
own car. It's not that young people in Europe are more careful. It's that they
haven't got the car."
Twenty years ago, the United States raised the drinking age in all 50 states and
the District of Columbia to 21. President Reagan signed the bill into law in
July 1984, making the United States the only country with such a high legal
drinking age.
I remember well that event twenty-years ago, a MADD triumph
that changed little for the college class after me which rode into age 18, 19,
20 and 21 along with the drinking age. I recall no less difficulty than I for
the yunguns to get a beer.
The Euros call it American prudery. I'm inclined to agree, but
without condemnation: of course it is. I'd rather prohibit my fifteen-going on
sixteen year old from drinking, all the while knowing it won't work. Let's just
call it my point of negotiation. But I would never deny her the automobile.
Never. (Some would: see this blog:
raise the
driving age and lower the drinking age). They just don't get that in
Europe. I mean, they take trains there, and buses. They even walk places. That
just won't fly in the land of the automobile. So, sorry, Washington Post,
MADD, and all the rest, but our kids will have their cars. They will also have
their beers, prohibited or not. Keep up the fight, guys, but don't you dare go
the extreme and deny them both. That'll just make it altogether and in so many
ways the worse.
Reformers are good at moving the public agenda. They are
dangerous as can be when they actually get what they want.
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