Guess what? Our number system has nothing to do with the age of maturity

Last updated on: July 12, 2015 at 11:03 am by Jane the Actuary

Guess what? Our number system has nothing to do with the age of maturity 2015-07-12T11:03:57-06:00 Jane the Actuary

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Here’s an article in today’s paper, a piece from AP: “Teen Truckers? Bill Would Drop Big-Rig Driver Age to 18.”

The article itself is about a bill allowing commercial truck drivers under the age of 21, who are allowed in various states, to begin work as truckers at the age of 18, to cross state lines in their driving among states which create interstate compacts.

The article reports:

The change was sought by the trucking industry to help address a shortage of truck drivers. The American Trucking Associations estimates that the current shortage of drivers is roughly 35,000 to 40,000, but because of retirements and individuals leaving the industry, trucking companies will need to recruit nearly 100,000 new drivers a year over the next decade to keep pace with the country’s freight needs.

The change has its opponents:

But Jackie Gillan, president of Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety, said allowing teens to drive trucks weighing as much as 80,000 pounds and to work as many as 82 hours a week, as is permitted in the truck industry, is a “catastrophe waiting to happen.”

“The combination of inexperience, high-risk driving and large trucks can cause unbelievable devastation,” she said.

and

Labor unions have said the driver shortage could be eliminated by raising truckers’ wages and improving working conditions.

Now, I’m not going to weigh in on whether an 18 year old has the capacity to be a successful, safe trucker, but I do think that accident data such as that cited in the article —

In 2013, all drivers ages 18-20 had a fatal crash involvement rate, per 100,000 licensed drivers, that was 66 percent higher than drivers who were age 21 years or older, according to the Transportation Department’s Fatality Analysis Reporting System, although the total number of crash deaths among teens has been declining since 2002

— doesn’t really tell us very much. Looking at driving done by teens as a whole, who simply have fewer hours of experience behind the wheel over the course of a year than a professional driver has in, say, a month’s time, and who are doing their driving at night, partying with friends, can’t really tell you how an 18 year old would fare, having earned a commercial license, perhaps being paired with another driver, following whatever procedures a trucking company might have to ensure a new driver is prepared.

But more than this: we have increasingly often let the fact that ages 18 and 19 still have the suffix “teen” in them lead us to think of those ages as not-yet-adult. Think of the fact that “teen pregnancy” statistics often include 18 and 19 year olds as “teenagers.” Or the push to make two years of community college universal. (Yes, of course, some sort of career training ought to be universal, but the current push goes beyond that — it’s about keeping 18 and 19 year olds in formal education for two more years after high school graduation.)

In this particular case: to allow 18 year olds who have the interest, to become truckers right away, even if under some kind of supervision, would surely (assuming that they are capable) be a good thing, rather than requiring that they kill time for three years, during which time they may or may not find something constructive to do (McDonalds?), and may or may not find their way to starting work on their 21st birthday. And it’s in this respect, I think, that allowing truckers to begin work at age 18 would help the industry recruit: not that truckers ages 18 – 20 will in themselves fill the gap, but that it would make trucking a “normal” career, not one that you end up with if, after bouncing around from job to job, you’re still looking for options.

(That being said, I don’t know squat about truckers’ wages and working conditions and whether employers are trying to bring in newcomers to hold down pay, or not.)

But in any case, just because we settled on a decimal, rather than, for instance, a duodecimal system, for our numbering, doesn’t mean that it takes until age 20 to become a mature adult. Though, I suppose, it could be worse, if we did use duodecimal and had collectively decided that two dozen is the age needed for adulthood!

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