Would You Help Your Kids Cheat to Get a Driver's License?
A reader named Ari writes from Israel:
Recently the Israel Government voted to change the minimum age for getting a driver’s license. Here is a snippet from an article in Ha’aretz (headlined “Israel to Lower Driving Age, but Tack on Period of Mandatory Supervision”):
The earliest age to start driving lessons will remain 16 and a half. The period of driving accompanied by an adult will have to cover at least 50 hours, 20 of them on urban streets, 15 hours on inter-urban roads and 15 hours of driving at night. The novice driver will have to have an adult chaperone at all hours of the day during the first three months but only at night during the second three months. After the novice driver and the accompanying person sign a declaration that the accompanied driving requirement has been fulfilled properly, the new driver will be given a young driver’s license.
I’m curious as to how the honor system is going to work here. If my child’s license were to depend on my declaration, what are the chances that I would fudge? How would the governing agency know? It seems to be unverifiable. I assume that there will be some internet-based form with a checkbox and maybe some number to fill in (number of hours driven night / day / rain / …) I believe that forcing a person to write his own declaration would make it more difficult for him to lie.
I wrote back to Ari:
Of course it may be that no one has a stronger incentive to make sure a kid gets all his training than the parent of said kid!
To which he replied:
As a father of eight kids, I’m more interested in the kid getting his license, and this is not because I have kids to spare, but because lessons costs a huge amount of money here. Between you me and the big blue sea, I think I’d fudge.
What would you do (assuming, perhaps, that you have fewer kids than Ari)? Also: if you are a parent of a novice driver, would you be more or less nervous if the vehicle your kid is learning to drive can also operate autonomously?
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