Probably the most interesting moral issues are those raised by practices we take for granted. No one asks about the morality of playing baseball, wearing socks, or taking showers. Likewise, no one asks about the morality of driving cars.
Well, actually, the Vatican does. The Roman Catholic headquarters recently issued a “Ten Commandments” for the world's drivers. These commandments include refraining from road rage, speeding, showing off, rudeness, or driving while intoxicated. The AP reporter who offered the Vatican's “road to salvation” story was clearly amused.
An Allstate ad that arrived this week did not offer much ground for amusement. Allstate notes that each year nearly 6,000 American teenagers are killed in car crashes, and that the number hasn't changed in a decade. This means that 60,000 American teenagers have been killed in car accidents in that period, which means that cars have taken more teenage American lives than were lost in the entire Vietnam War.
Anna Quindlen, a columnist for Newsweek, rarely writes much of anything that I agree with. But in her June 11 column she was writing as a parent. In that column she lamented the sad rite of passage that now accompanies nearly every other high-school milestone—the funeral of the dead teenager, killed in a car accident.
We have seen all too many such funerals here in west Tennessee. I am not even talking about the horrifically stupid accident in Selmer, Tenn., in which a drag-racing stunt gone terribly wrong claimed the lives of six young people. I wasn't there, but the very idea of what was attempted on an average city street without guardrails and thronged with people seems incomprehensible.
No, my focus today is the garden-variety car accident involving the garden-variety teenager who is set loose at 15 or 16 years old driving a deadly piece of heavy machinery whose successful operation requires virtues and skills that are not always in abundant supply.
Since my daughter's near-fatal accident last year, and the birth of Loaves and Fishes ministry to meet the needs of local families hit by similar catastrophes, we have helped 14 families, almost all of them affected by car accidents involving teenagers. Given the fact that at least one-third of all 16-year-old drivers is involved in serious accidents, who will be the next to die?
With modern advances in health care and life expectancy, it seems that if you can get through the age of 21 without getting killed in a car accident, you will likely live to be about 90. But altogether too many are not making it to the age of 21.
Teen driving makes for an excellent example of the power of the law as a kind of social teacher. When the law books say that 15-year-olds are ready for a learner's permit and 16-year-olds are ready for a driver's license, most people tend to assume that 15-year-olds are ready for a learner's permit and 16-year-olds are ready for a driver's license. But what if the law is wrong? Can we think of any other examples where the law has ever been wrong about anything?
What I teach in Christian ethics classes is that the law is a floor, not a ceiling. That is, it sets minimal social expectations in keeping with a society dedicated to the maximum range of freedom consistent with social order. So most states have decided that, all things considered, the law should permit people to drive cars when they are 16. This ends up meaning that every 15-year-old expects to be a licensed driver the day they turn 16, as a kind of birthright or rite of passage. And on it goes.
Both Allstate and Anna Quindlen argue for changes in the law. Allstate wants to see comprehensive, graduated driving-license systems in every state. Anna Quindlen suggests that we look at Europe, socially liberal on almost everything but its driver's license laws—in most European countries, that age is 18.
I believe in a consistent pro-life ethic. This means that any and every threat to human well-being is a moral issue. Any behavior that regularly ends human life must become a matter of especially intense moral engagement. Driving takes the lives of 1.2 million people a year around the world, and injures another 50 million. Driving, therefore, is a moral issue of the first magnitude. I think that it must be entirely reconsidered in a culture that loves its cars but buries altogether too many of its occupants.
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— David Gushee is university fellow and Graves Professor of Moral Philosophy at Union University in Jackson, Tenn. www.davidgushee.com.