1. driving is easy, and easy to learn if you have a good teacher. My mother did an excellent job. I know many kids lack the type of teacher i had and thus driver ed may be appropriate. A teenager has more then enough time to learn how to drive. Much Much more then somebody older has. Also The most important factor in knowing how to drive is experience, you can learn all about it; but intill you practice you won't know how to. raising the age will just change the time period one gains such experience to a point where one needs to already have it in order to travel to work and college. Having it lower when the student has less of a need to travel allows for short runs across town instead of across counties. Also students need to be able to drive to their part time jobs they have during highschool, as well as their extra circular activities.

2. Media does not effect teens that much. if any thing it affects their parents too much, ever heard the news say to drive slow well its snowing? don't, its not about your speed its about your acceleration and distance and you need momentum in certain parts of the road to get through, you only travel slow if you can't predict in a appropriate amount of time what is going to come in front of you, like a white out. I live in the Midwest of the united states and its always frustrating to me how people who have lived here their entire lives don't know how to drive in the snow(their either older, or inexperienced), they get stuck, slide, over correct their slide when they do etc. argh. Then the news tells them to go slow when theres no need to and when a lack of momentum increases their chances of getting stuck, you really just need to give yourself more stopping distance because your acceleration is going to be lower. The media has made a little snow seem like such a big deal and have gotten my parents worried about me traveling to campus, or have even made some parents force their kids to stay home and miss lecture.

another thing i hate, is how people turn. I accelerate out of my turns. There is this intersection by my house. If i'm the first car waiting to turn then I'm half way down the road to my house by the time the other car is just finishing turning. This intersection sometimes has 15 cars waiting to turn, if people turned like me all of them could make it through before the light changes. This is actually promoted by the part of the media you blame for "bad driving", yet its something which would increase the efficiency of stop lights and lower drive times for everybody on the road with no increase to the danger of driving. I do not drive this way because of the media, but because of my understanding of physics and desire to actually drive good. If the media actually gets people to turn better, I'm all for it.

The media can be a positive or a negative when it comes towards how people drive. The media's effect on teenagers is over-hyped, and the news most older people watch is stupid. driving is fun, it can have a lot of thrills; especially if your doing it safely and trying to actively maximize the convenience of it to not only yourself but to others.

Secondly, teenagers, even sensible ones, are too preoccupied with the demands of school and socialization that there is not enough spare time of effort to actually learn how to drive properly.

I had to take a driving course and a driving test before I could even get my permit, as do all other people in the area that I live in.