Debating teen driving

There have been plenty of days (nights, actually) when -- if I were a state legislator -- I would gladly have voted to raise the driving age to 30. There were other times when I would have lowered it to 14, notably the years when our children needed chauffeuring to marching band practice, soccer, youth group and music lessons.

The insurance industry wants the driving age raised to 17 or 18, arguing that it will save lives. We had a story on this on Tuesday.

This isn't one of those issues that you should probably be allowed to decide if you have teenagers, because you count the days until Junior can haul his own self around town; but then you can't relax. Ever.

I didn't know what to think, really, so I went to the online version of the story and looked at some of your comments. Here are some of the points you made:

* Do we really want kids to start driving for the first time when they turn 18 and go away to college? (Hmm. Good thought.)

* Europe has a better system because their minimum age is higher? Remember, Europe has a much better public transportation system. (Yeah, and gas is ridiculous over there.)

* Kids have more distractions these days than when we were teenagers. Raise the minimum age. (I dunno about that. I was pretty distracted.)

* Why pick on teenagers? Have you ever gotten behind a senior going 20 mph? (Hey, lay off us old guys.)

* A bigger problem is parents who give their kids muscle cars. (Absolutely. They should have to drive a Park Avenue until 18.)

These are good comments, and if you want to join the discussion of the minimum driving age, go to newsobserver.com and search for "teen driver." We've gotten about 13,000 comments on our stories in the past three months since we added this feature. Many of the comments have broadened the discussion of issues, and that's a good thing.

Back from China

I took it upon myself to debrief two folks from Chapel Hill who were working at the Olympics, professor C.A. Tuggle and journalism student Parin Desai.

Tuggle organized a group of about 30 UNC-CH journalism students who worked in the media operation at the games, including Desai.

Desai, who graduates this semester from UNC-CH, didn't get to see Michael Phelps (the first question she got from everyone back home), but she did get to see Inner Mongolia, so there's that.

She spent her time at the games getting quotes for the media from basketball players, and that involved some neck-craning. One memorable interview was with NBA star Pau Gasol of the Spanish team, who is 7 feet tall. Desai is 5-foot-2.

Tuggle, who was working for the China Internet Information Center -- essentially the big official Web site -- had this insight to share: In general, older Chinese are less willing to try something new than younger ones, and the line of demarcation is around 25. He also noticed that there tended to be fuzziness about who was in charge.

Tuggle's philosophy is that "Nothing is impossible if the right person will sign the right piece of paper." But in Beijing, it was unclear who that right person was. "There's a lot of buck-passing," he said.

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