There has been one campaign after another to raise the driving age in every state. One showed a kid with a frown on his face staring at the camera, and the nice, fair poster said, “Do you want Him driving on where YOU do?”

I wouldn’t want ANYBODY with that expression of his NEAR me.

I mention this because it was the first time I had ever testified before a committee, and I was alone. I was barely sixteen so I could keep my license if they raised the age, but I KNEW something. I knew that, at the least with the statistics at that time, raising the age to 16 would do no good at all.

I knew that the 14 to 16-year olds had a lower accident per mile rate than most of the other two-year groups. I knew that in Europe, where you had to wait until you were twenty-one, the deaths per mile were triple the American rates.

What was really impressive about my speaking there was that it was a an omen for the rest of my life. First, I was the ONLY witness on the anti side. Second, the long line of witnesses for the trendy side were the same ones who line up for every single trendy cause today.

There must have been twenty guys with their collars backwards. If these guys believe their business is keeping people out of Hell, they would have SOMETHING to do besides marching about capital punishment and abortion. Most of them were Episcopalian so I doubt they really believed in anything but their social status.

But everybody but me had been there before, usually on some other Fashionable Issue of the Day.

They bitched and moaned about “young drivers.” But the statistics they were quoting were about the infamous 16-25-year-old male drivers. The law would do nothing to bring down THEIR accident rate.

I guess that was one of my earliest Mantras, trying to get off the moaning and screeching and talk about REALITY. But you would certainly have recognized the pro witnesses, and the lone person on the other side.