The Nanny State is alive and doing very well in this land which likes to image itself as the aura of freedom and free choice but is in actuality actively behaving more like overprotective parents that never wants any of their offspring to have the courage to take upon themselves the responsibilities of actual personal choice and decision making. For instance, if automobiles were a new invention, just now making their mark upon American soil, it is a certainty that the general driver's license age of sixteen (which is consistent with most American States) would never have a remote possibility of happening in America. First off, there isn't much of anything that is legal for a teenager at sixteen, I mean, you can't even go in to see a "R" rated movie at sixteen, you can't legally buy cigarettes at sixteen, you can't vote at sixteen, and you certainly can't legally drink at sixteen; so it would be a truly audacious leap to believe that any legislature anywhere in the United States would even have the nerve to suggest a driver's license age of only just sixteen.
Slowly and inexorably, the noose has tightened around the privilege to drive an automobile at sixteen, throughout all the States of this Union, to which virtually all States now have some sort of license restriction such as a passenger limit in the car, a curfew limit on driving, an age threshold for the passengers, and so forth for drivers under the age of eighteen. Additionally, to that, whereas previously the age to drive unrestricted in most States was sixteen, this has been pushed back by a few months in many States, to sixteen years and six months, or even out to seventeen or eighteen, and so forth, with virtually no blowback from youthful drivers at all. The fact that there has been so little protest about this isn't too surprising, since sixteen and seventeen year olds have no voting rights, and are typically not emancipated from parental authority, so consequently they have virtually no political power whatsoever.
Making things even more problematic for young drivers is the fact that the very people that would be most likely to champion their driving at sixteen, their parents, are often conflicted about their young charges actually being permitted to drive their vehicle since, in point of fact, they may not have compete faith or confidence in their decision making and maturity. This means, in essence, that except for the tradition of having drivers at the age of sixteen, there isn't much else that would be a compelling reason for them to have this privilege, since most drivers of that age, don't have steady employment, or other credible circumstances that would necessitate their driving, other than convenience, or school-related reasons.
The bottom line is that the Nanny State sees this as a ready-made opportunity to correct something that needs to be corrected to which there will be a minuscule complaint about it. After all, the Federal Government was able to push through the increase of the legal alcohol drinking age from eighteen to twenty-one, by simply attaching the funding of Highways within their States to their adherence to this new law. This playbook worked very well for that purpose, so it is almost a given, they will use exactly the same play again in the very near future.