preview

Legal Driving Age Analysis

Decent Essays

Today my son turns seventeen, an exciting age for a teenager as adulthood and increased independence is on the verge of becoming realism. For some parents, celebrating their teenagers next birthday is no longer a reality as the life of their child is taken from the world in a blink of an eye. The once blissful occasion to celebrate the birth of a child is now a heart-wrenching reminder of the tragic accident that took such a young life unexpectedly and unnecessarily. No parent wishes to ever need to imagine burying a child, however sadly for some parents this inconceivable event becomes a horrific reality. Unwillingly facing such a grief-stricken incident can leave an infinite number of unanswered questions running through a parent’s mind. What exactly happened? Could this tragedy been avoided? Was this young driver …show more content…

Last night, just one day before my second son’s seventeenth birthday and merely two days after empowering him with the privilege of a driver’s license, this parent’s worst nightmare nearly became a reality for my family. Nearly six years prior, our oldest son at the same age of seventeen, miraculously missed a brush with death created by a similar reckless accident. Both events triggered by their own careless driving. Reflecting back on these events provokes question on whether the legal driving age of sixteen is reasonably appropriate. Recent statistics from the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention show that in 2013, two thousand one hundred and sixty three teenagers in the United States between the ages of sixteen and nineteen were killed in vehicle crashes.1 Within these same statistics, over two hundred forty three thousand teenagers were treated in emergency rooms suffering injuries from motor vehicle crashes.1 Legislation should be put in place to reduce these risks of unnecessary fatalities. The legal age of driving should be increased to the minimum age of eighteen in the United States to help reduce these

Get Access