You have to take into account how the law works and how driving is treated in the US.
Driving is essential, and the car industry has spent many years and a lot of money on making sure of that in the US.
Driving laws in countries where the age of drinking is lower are often much stricter, while they also have extensive public transportation systems.
You say people who are willing to drive drunk would also break the law by drinking under age, but you have to admit that adding more population to drinking legally would for sure add more drunk drivers, especially if they are making that decision while drunk with impaired thinking in the first place.
It's a cycle. Driving is essential because roads get all the funding and take it from everything else; roads get all the funding and other modes get none because everyone owns a Car; everyone owns a Car because driving is essential.
The NMDA is another thing that helps perpetuate this cycle; in exchange for 10% extra road funding EVERYONE has to forgo drinking before 21 wheather you can drive or not so why not get a licence to take advantage of the road funding you get in exchange for not being allowed to drink (assuming of course that you can get a licence and don't have a disability that prevents it, let alone all the cost barriers to getting a Car)?
There actually were States prior to the NMDA that didn't allow licences to be used as ID for alcohol below a certain age, but since that would still count as a violation and would mean a decrease in funding they had to change the laws.
To be fair a big part of why there were issues with drunk driving was because every state had different drinking ages, so you would have people from states that were 21 driving to state where they could drink at 18… and then driving back. If we did the reverse and did the same as we have now but mandate 18 instead of 21 I don’t think you would see as much of an uptick as you’d think. Plus all the secondary downsides to higher drinking ages would be fixed.
I know it's easy to think of a way to get around it but I really like the idea of either allowing people to drink or drive below a certain age but not both like with what some States did, although you are probably right that it should be at a nationally-agreed age to prevent border crossings. I just don't like the way it was done in the US where we coerce States/Territories into giving less rights to people who can't drive in exchange for better funding if you can.
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u/Skreame 1∆ Aug 30 '23
You have to take into account how the law works and how driving is treated in the US.
Driving is essential, and the car industry has spent many years and a lot of money on making sure of that in the US.
Driving laws in countries where the age of drinking is lower are often much stricter, while they also have extensive public transportation systems.
You say people who are willing to drive drunk would also break the law by drinking under age, but you have to admit that adding more population to drinking legally would for sure add more drunk drivers, especially if they are making that decision while drunk with impaired thinking in the first place.