I'm sympathetic to the idea of not infantilizing college students, but not to the anecdote of driving 5-10 miles to McDonald's in a Pinto without brakes. Sounds like it'd endanger others.
Driving a car without functional brakes on the highway is pure stupidity. It's not "fun boyish hijinks" if someone else dies because of you. It's not nanny-stating to think that your cool future story/character-building experience shouldn't involve putting innocent bystanders at risk.
On the other extreme end of the scale, consider a young person with lots of potential entering university, who then decides to rebel by trying increasingly harder drugs, and ends up with drugs tainted with fentanyl and dies of an overdose. Similar situations have happened before, such as this report of a physics senior dying of fentanyl [1].
Consider young people who try black hat hacking as a prank or for illicit means, and getting a criminal record (source of this happening in Canada [2]. Students also cheat on their courses, get caught, and get expelled. Others make TikTok videos on train tracks, touch the electrified rail, and end up hospitalized or dead.
This is the extreme end of the scale, but these cases and personal experience have led me to believe that it's typically far better to follow the law while questioning conventions. I admit there are cases (e.g. Uber) where people and companies succeeded by breaking the law, but I figure the risks are pretty high, and there is still plenty of opportunity to innovate while respecting the law in one's personal and professional life.
They didn't ask you :). EDIT: Sorry dad! If every decision was rational and safe we'd be a very uniform and good society. Surprised you did not see the irony, but I guess this is HN.