Age of Consent should be Equal to age of first drivers license / alcohol/smoking. It should be a rite of passage to adult hood. Personally I think all of the consent legal etc ages should be 18 with conditions.
You graduate from High school, you are an adult. Either that or make the legal ages be Graduation day from high school if you are already 18 or your 18th birthday if you have already graduated. If they fail to graduate they have to wait till they are 20 or 21 years of age.
Give kids an incentive to at least Graduate!
Again, you make the mistake of equating everything to America.
16 is also the permissible leaving age in Britain for education. You can leave school at 16, and either work or go to local college. Or stay on either one or two more years (’5th and 6th year’ in Scotland and NI,’5th and 6th form’ in England and Wales) and complete higher level exams which allow passage to university or advanced college courses.
The age of smoking is now 18 here, but only changed recently from 16.
Driving?.....17 is the earliest.
So here in Britain:
16-—legal to have sex (straight or gay), legal to work, legal to leave education, legal to go to college, legal to get married without parental consent in Scotland (consent needed in rest of UK), legal to join the armed forces (cannot serve in a war until 17 though) or police (as a junior cadet)
17—legal to drive, legal to go to university
18-—legal adult, so you are free to drink, rent a property, get a mortgage/credit card/loan etc etc etc....