When I lived in rural Canada I taught my 11 year old son to drive as a safety precaution in case I or another adult with him would become incapacitated for some reason. It's a very strange feeling to see your child in control of a ton and a half of steel, to trust him with both your lives and he's doing a great job of it. After my initial worries that he'd do something crazy faded I realized that I'm under-estimating my childs abilities consistently. He drove us around the area where we lived for a while until he asked me if I was satisfied with his driving skills. Amazed was more like it.
Letting kids drive in traffic is dangerous, no doubt about it and here in NL I would have probably not done this. It's much denser populated here (where we lived was extremely sparse) and help from other adults or ambulance service is a (cell-) phone call away. But in the sticks that's not the case and such skills can be life savers.
"After my initial worries that he'd do something crazy"
As I think back on my experiences of surviving crazy driving, it was never "just drivin' around and suddenly doing something dumb" it was always bad judgment usually under pressure. So there is freezing rain forecast but I really want to play video games with my friend. My dad is going to kill me if I get home late again. Its a completely empty and abandoned road in great weather conditions... what could possibly go wrong? I've never driven in over six inches of snow, but everyone else on the road does it all the time, so how hard can it possibly be? I'm sleepy but the sooner I get home the sooner I'll get to sleep, so go for it. I'm not really drunk I don't even feel a buzz and haven't had a drop in two hours.
I most certainly did not get into accidents in every story above, mostly thru dumb luck. They all do have a common thread of later on, looking back, even dumb teen me was asking myself WTF I was thinking when I made those decisions.
Its not entirely different than teen experience with romantic relationships and even to some extent friend relationships. Oh and drugs and alcohol too. And finances.
Lack of patience seems to be the root of all evil, with me when I was a teen and in other teens I saw. Can't teach wisdom or judgment, but you can teach patience.
So then how would I have been able to help my dad on the farm driving wheat truck to the elevator when i was licensed at 14? (Drove tractor from the age of 12.)
Man, you're crazy to let kids drive, might as well put loaded guns in their hands... oh, wait!