The newly proposed initiative has opened a deeper debate about accountability, maturity, enforcement and whether the state is regulating reality or retreating from responsibility.
LAHORE: In early December 2025, a province-wide traffic enforcement drive in Punjab created a controversy after police registered over 4,600 cases and arrested around 3,100 people in 72 hours, with officials later stating that a “large number of schoolchildren” were among those detained. Videos circulated online of minors being stopped, motorcycles impounded, and students being interrogated, drawing widespread criticism and legal challenges.
Parents and lawyers warned that detaining minors for traffic violations risked saddling them with criminal records and jeopardising their futures. Within days, the political and legal pressure mounted. As a result, Punjab Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz Sharif expressed displeasure over minors being handcuffed for breaking traffic rules, saying she did not want to arrest children, and ordered that first‑time violations by underage riders should result in warnings rather than punishments.
The Lahore High Court Chief Justice, Aalia Neelum, also intervened, instructing authorities to halt arrests of underage drivers and focus on awareness campaigns and warnings for first-time offences.
Responding to the backlash and the court’s order, the provincial government announced it would allow 16‑year‑olds to obtain motorcycle licences and smart cards, moving away from the usual age of 18. This was a major policy shift aimed at acknowledging a reality that many riders, parents, police and legal experts have long struggled to reconcile.
However, the newly proposed initiative has opened a deeper debate about accountability, maturity, enforcement and whether the state is regulating reality or retreating from responsibility.
Punishment, parents, and the ‘root’ of the problem
Among parents of teenage children, reactions to both the crackdown and the reversal have been conflicted. While some parents appreciated the move, saying it was on par with many developed countries, others opined that issuing motorcycle licences to teenagers would mean they could be held liable for offences, which they currently are not.
“I think that the police should confiscate the motorbike and fine the parents if a child violates the traffic rules instead of giving them licences,” said one father from Rawalpindi, responding to the previous arrests. “Parents will automatically be forced to care because it’s inconvenient to them. Might prevent little idiots from riding a bike around. The issue needs to be dealt with at the root.”
Misbah Khan, the mother of a 14‑year‑old son from Jhelum, watching the debate unfold from the sidelines, put it more bluntly.
“You should fine the parents for showing such irresponsible behaviour. Licence or no licence, these are your kids. How can you endanger their lives? I won’t give a car or a bike to my son unless he’s 20, whether the law allows or not,” she told Dawn.
On the other hand, Daniyal Naseer from Faisalabad, a father of three teenage sons, cited the example of some foreign countries and appreciated the government’s proposal.
“It’s a very smart move. It will not only empower these children to commute to schools and colleges independently and help their families with household chores but will also make them more responsible,” he said.
Other responses collectively reflected a widely held belief that children ride because adults allow it. Households buy motorcycles, pay fuel expenses, and often rely on children to commute independently because public transport is unreliable, unsafe or unavailable.
The enforcement surge, however, shifted the burden of punishment onto minors, a dynamic many parents viewed as unfair. Lawyers outside district courts in Lahore reported parents rushing to secure bail for their children after being brought in for routine traffic violations.
According to multiple reports, what began as a routine crackdown spiralled into scenes of young riders being detained alongside adult offenders, leaving families to question whether public safety had been weighed against long‑term harm.
The clash between strict enforcement and parental frustration has fueled a public debate over adults who enable underage riding; however, many still recoil when the legal consequences fall on the children themselves.
The government’s rationale
Explaining the government’s sudden shift, Punjab Information Minister Azma Bokhari framed the decision as pragmatic rather than permissive.
“By the age of sixteen, children usually complete high school, and their college-level education begins,” she told Dawn. “At this stage, mobility becomes an issue. Therefore, permission has been given for issuing motorcycle licences to them.”
She acknowledged the backlash triggered by the arrests and said, “The chief minister did raise the concern that children should not be penalised unnecessarily.”
Bokhari insisted the policy was not a relaxation of standards. “The licence issued to them will be strictly for motorcycles only. Certain restrictions will be added, such as a speed limit of 50 kilometres per hour.”
“If, God forbid, an accident occurs due to a mistake,” she said, “then naturally the challan will be issued to the rider, and no FIR (first information report) will be registered. However, if there is a loss of life, the case will fall under the Juvenile Act.”
She rejected the idea that juveniles would escape responsibility: “If a child is capable of understanding the process of obtaining a licence, then they must also understand the liabilities that come with it, and they do understand them.”
Officials have said the shift is intended not to encourage underage riding, but to regulate and formalise what has been a widespread practice.
“Essentially, we are trying to create a balance. To safeguard children’s mobility while preparing them to ride according to traffic rules. They will be provided with helmets and proper lane discipline, so that accidents can be prevented and other road users can also travel safely,” the minister said.
A licence without liability?
Legal experts say the law is far less certain than some officials suggest, warning that, in practical terms, primary responsibility could evaporate from parents once a minor is licensed, leaving a vacuum of accountability.
Farooq Amjad Meer, senior partner at Lahore’s Meer Hasan Attorneys at Law, told Dawn that if a licensed 16-year-old causes an accident, “no one will be responsible for payment of damages.”
Minors, he explained, are prosecuted under juvenile justice procedures, though the applicable penal law remains the general criminal law. Civil liability, however, is limited: “Under the law of torts, an adult can be made vicariously liable along with the minor — but not otherwise.”
Insurance, often cited as a safeguard in road safety debates, offers little clarity. “The insurance company shall pay to the victim if he is insured — not the other way round,” Meer said, noting that insurers frequently contest claims involving minors.’
On the legislative side, he was unequivocal. “Executive order is not sufficient,” he said, adding that lowering the licensing age would require formal amendments to existing motor vehicle laws. Without those changes, the new policy risks being challenged or inconsistently applied.
Implementation versus intent
For Sunil Munj, the co-founder of popular Pakistani automobile website, PakWheels.com, the controversy over age distracts from a larger failure in policy and enforcement.
“It doesn’t matter if the age is lowered to 16, 15 or even 14,” he told Dawn. “You have to draw a line somewhere. The basic thing is how the authorities monitor it, and how the implementation of this rule will be.”
“In this country,” he added, “almost 60 per cent of the population drives without a licence, even though it’s as easy to get as paan or a cigarette. Scrutiny is what matters.”
Munj also questioned the absence of data guiding the policy shift. “There is no data in Pakistan, no empirical evidence. Unless there is data showing that 90 per cent of underage people run into accidents, how can I comment?”
He pointed to international examples but warned against superficial comparisons: “There are countries where 16‑year‑olds are allowed to drive, like England. Even if you lower the age further, my question remains: is implementation there?”
The risks are not merely theoretical; international precedents suggest that lowering the licensing age can have immediate, quantifiable impacts on public safety.
In Switzerland, for example, which lowered the minimum age for 125cc motorcycles to 16 in 2021, the Swiss Council for Accident Prevention (BFU) reported that serious injuries among riders under 18 nearly tripled within three years. Before the law change, the country averaged 51 serious injuries annually in this age group; by 2024, that number surged to 156. This spike has fueled an intense political debate in Switzerland over whether to raise the age limit back to 18, a cautionary tale for Punjab as it formalises its own policy shift.
Inside the police debate
This global evidence of rising accidents mirrors the internal anxieties within Punjab’s enforcement agencies. Traffic police have faced conflicting directives. Early in the crackdown, officers were told to enforce traffic laws strictly, including for underage riders; after court intervention and political pushback, they were instructed to issue warnings and halt arrests of minors. This flip‑flop, some officers say, has made operational clarity difficult.
Speaking to Dawn, a senior traffic police official, who chose not to be named, said the issue could not be reduced to enforcement alone. “We have to assess children’s maturity level,” he said. “Who will determine what is considered adult in this context?”
He questioned the ethical foundation of the move: “If something goes wrong, the public might question why the government issued licenses to immature people? If accidents happen, the state will be answerable.”
The official argued that the debate ignored structural failures: “When people argue there is no public transport, what about women and girls? What about accident ratios?”
“Once a licence is given,” he said, “the applicability of law will be the same. You have to decide whether inconvenience is a bigger issue or risking lives.”
Psychology, not just paperwork
Traffic psychologists stress that the debate over lowering the licensing age is less about paperwork and more about psychology, warning that age-based licensing without safeguards risks legitimising danger rather than reducing it.
“Lowering the minimum licensing age cannot be interpreted in a linear way,” said Paolo Perego, a Europe-based traffic psychologist with international experience in road safety and driver behaviour.
“Age alone is a relatively weak indicator; what matters more is how developmental factors interact with exposure, vehicle characteristics, and regulatory conditions.”
At around 16, he explained, key skills linked to self-regulation, hazard anticipation, impulse control, and emotional management are still developing, which can increase vulnerability in demanding traffic environments, especially for novice riders who are only beginning to acquire perceptual skills such as effective visual scanning and anticipation of other road users’ actions.
“Research also shows that adolescents are more sensitive to immediate rewards and social feedback than to long-term consequences, meaning peer presence or even perceived judgment can shape riding behaviour and reduce margins for error,” he told Dawn.
“Yet in many contexts, particularly where motorcycles are already used daily by teenagers, early licensing may formalise an existing reality rather than create a new one, bringing young riders into a regulated system that allows training, testing, accountability, and enforceable safety measures such as helmet use.”
Perego added that comparable models existed in parts of Europe, where limited motorcycle access from age 16 was permitted under strict technical and regulatory constraints to manage early exposure rather than ignore it.
“However, the way the policy is communicated matters. If early licensing is perceived as a general relaxation of standards rather than as a supervised learning phase, it may unintentionally reinforce risky norms. The issue is therefore less about age itself and more about the meaning attached to the policy.”
The law, rewritten
Officials, including Deputy Inspector General (DIG) Traffic Police Lahore Athar Waheed, described the move as an attempt to regulate an already widespread practice rather than introduce a radical departure from existing law.
“In many countries, licences at 16 or 17 are provisional,” Waheed told Dawn. “We will call it a juvenile driving permit, and it will only be for motorcycles.”
He explained that amendments are being drafted to the Motor Vehicle Rules, including a proposed new Article 19-A, to accommodate the change. Under the proposal, the permit would be issued through the same process as a regular licence, requiring physical presence, medical fitness, and testing to establish riding competence, and would remain valid for two years.
DIG Waheed said the rationale behind the amendment was rooted in demographic and social realities, noting that millions of teenagers commute daily, often already riding motorcycles, while enforcement against underage driving has historically been limited.
On criminal liability, he drew a clear distinction, saying: “If a juvenile is given a permit, then a parent will not be responsible, as it will be their own responsibility.”
However, he added that strict action would continue in cases of illegal underage driving.
“If someone under 16 is driving and causes an accident, then whoever has purchased the vehicle or abetted them will face criminal proceedings.”
Punjab’s roads, reality and responsibility
Beyond legal frameworks and official statements lies the reality of Punjab’s roads, which are crowded, chaotic and unforgiving. On these roads, underage riders are not anomalies but part of daily traffic.
For many families, motorcycles are tools of mobility in cities where public transport is patchy and often unsafe.
Public transport systems across Punjab’s urban and peri‑urban areas have long struggled with capacity and reliability, pushing households to make pragmatic decisions about how children travel. The state’s new approach seeks to bring these practices under legal purview rather than continue to ignore them.
But formal recognition does not erase the lived uncertainties of riders or families.
The crackdown exposed these underlying dynamics but did not resolve them. Parents who condemned arrests still hand over keys. Police officers who sympathise with families continue enforcing shifting directives. The state, caught between public backlash and enforcement imperatives, now proposes licences, but the underlying tensions remain.
An unresolved balance
At its core, the debate is not only about motorcycles or age thresholds. It is about where responsibility begins, and where the state chooses to place it.
Officials insist the policy can be revisited if misused. Critics argue that once responsibility is transferred to minors, reclaiming it will be difficult.
Whether licensing 16‑year‑olds becomes a tool for safety or a mechanism for shifting blame will depend on what follows, including training, enforcement, insurance and accountability, and not on the licence card itself.
For now, the question remains unresolved. When the state hands a licence to a child, who truly carries the burden when something goes wrong?
(Opinion) Article Published in DAWN on December 29, 2025.
