the car rental folks have it right

from this month's national geographic story on the human mind:

The last area of the brain to reach maturity is the prefrontal cortex, where the so-called executive brain resides -- where we make social judgments, weigh alternatives, plan for the future, and hold our behavior in check.
"The executive brain doesn't hit adult levels until the age of 25," says Jay Giedd of the National Institute of Mental Health, one of the lead scientists on the neuroimaging studies. "At puberty, you have adult passions, sex drive, energy, and emotion, but the reining in doesn't happen until much later." It is no wonder, perhaps, that teenagers seem to lack good judgment or the ability to restrain impulses. "We can vote at 18," says Giedd, "and drive a car. But you can't rent a car until you're 25. In terms of brain anatomy, the only ones who've got it right are the car-rental people."