Minimum Driving Age Essay

Should the minimum driving age be raised? In the article Traffic Safety Facts the NHTSA states that, 5,864 15 - 20 year old drivers were involved in fatal crashes in 2008, which is a 27% decrease from the crashes in 1998. This is still a big number, and has been tried to be reduced by New Jersey, but ended up not doing much, and instead added and increase of car crashes to an older age group. The minimum driving age should not be raised to allow teens to gain experience, learn responsibility, while staying safe altogether.

Teen driving allows American youth to have their license between the ages 13-15. At this age, our American youth are more likely to be careless while driving without supervision. The younger teen drivers are the more susceptible to fatal car accidents they will be due to the lack of supervision and proper driver’s education. Lack of maturity and experiences leads to developing poor driving habits. The teens in the age group 16-18 are usually more mature in handling a motorized vehicle. States that allow 13-15 year old teens drive are more likely to get in more car crashes from driving earlier and not having enough experience.

The problem of inexperience in starting drivers can not be fixed by raising the minimum driving age. If the minimum age is raised to 18, then the crashes with 16 and 17 year olds will become very small. However, the original amount of crashes will be seen with the 18 year olds, as they will be in the same situation as the 16 year olds did, but with a few years of experience. Therefore, they will react in a similar way, not affecting the total amount of crashes or the lack of safety on the road caused by these inexperienced drivers. In Source 2, “Teenage Driving Laws May Just delay deadly Crashes”, Anahad O’Connor states, “‘When you look at the bigger picture across 18- and 19-year-olds, it looks like we’re offsetting those saved crashes,’ he said. ‘In fact, 75 percent of the fatal crashes we thought we were saving actually just occurred two years

Many teenagers cannot wait for the day they grab ahold of their licenses. They think of many new opportunities they have waiting for them behind the wheel. Teens may use this opportunity for reasons such as driving to school and work or running errands. Yet, sometimes they can get a little careless and cause a safety concern on the road with other commuters. Therefore, the age limit should be raised to the age of eighteen.

We as citizens today should do everything we can to protect our youth, after all they are the future leaders of America. As a mother of a teenager, I worry about when my teenager will begin driving. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Web-based Injury Statistics Query and Reporting System (WISQARS) [Online]. (2013). National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (producer). [Cited 2015 Oct 7]. Motor vehicle crashes are the leading cause of death for U.S. teens. We as citizens need to take an active role and do more to prevent our youth from being in harm’s way. Allowing our youth to begin driving on the roads at the age of 15 years, with a learner’s permit, we are allowing them to drive as an inexperience driver, a driver subject to distractions, and the age limit needs to be raised.

Driving any type of vehicle is a big responsibility. The various laws and road safety rules are ones that need to be fully understood. While this is all very true there are some drivers who need to have time to learn and gain the experience to become good drivers. As the experience level of these people is still very low it is necessary for the teenage drivers to be careful as they begin to gain their experience. By letting the teenage drivers see the awesome responsibility that comes of driving any vehicle they may learn to be careful. This care will lead to more teenage drivers becoming

“Dr. Mosten strongly suspects that the reason for the increase… is that many teenagers, rather than deal with extra restrictions… are simply waiting… and skipping the restrictions all together” (O’Connor 38-42). If so then there are hundreds potentially thousands of untrained and unqualified drivers on today’s streets causing it to be just as dangerous. However these may be correlated with one-another but the fact of the matter is that the responsible teens that follow the restrictions and participate in driving programs are safer drivers. Dr. Mosten exclaims,” The bottom line is there is a net overall savings from introducing all these programs”(35-36); 1,348 less 16year old crashes but 1,086 more 18year old crashes. This proves however slight it may be, that the programs

At any age, a new driver is going to be more likely to experience accidents in traffic. No amount of age increase will change this fact. Also, learning early can prove to be a substantial benefit to the driver, and those who coexist with the driver. Learning to drive in the presence of a parent and in a town that the driver is accustomed to can provide a much better success than learning alone in a foreign place would. Finally, even if there was a law change, there would be many who would break the law, and be just as dangerous as they are now. Teenagers need transportation, and independence will motivate the disobedience of the law for many if this law was passed. Teenagers might be inexperienced, but the current age system allows time for the driver to learn in a safe environment. It is important to consider the other reasons for accidents before assuming everything is at the fault of the teenager. Distracted driving remains a huge issue, especially with distracted driving, and this is where the law making should be targeted. Teens and society are better off if teenagers learn at an early age with the current restriction, and any alteration could prove to have more consequences than the state of the status

Raising the age was not an idea based on opinions. Over the years many people and organizations have recorded facts and statistics to support their claims. An example shown on CBS News, shows that “More than 5,000 U.S. teens die each year in car crashes. The rate of crashes, fatal and nonfatal, per mile driven for 16-year-old drivers is almost 10 times the rate for drivers ages 30 to 59, according to the National Highway Safety Administration” (CBS NEWS). One huge influence on the topic was the Insurance Institutes for Highway Safety, they created a seventeen page memo filled with statistics and examples of how raising the age is a necessity. This is not the first attempt to use statistics to support the appeal to raise the age. The Seattle Times states, “The example the institute uses most prominently is New Jersey, the only state with a minimum driver's license age of 17. The report cited a study from 1992-96 in which the rate of crash-related deaths among 16- and 17-year-olds was 18 per 100,000 in New Jersey, compared with 26 per 100,000 in Connecticut, which had a minimum driver's license age of 16 and 4 months” (Willette). Overall the argument that raising the age will result in less teen deaths while driving is highly justified. There are frequent examples and a huge amount of research that proves that younger drivers are more likely to cause harm or damage than an older, more experienced driver.

“Unfortunately, we don’t educate drivers enough to be respectful on the road” Mario Andretti once said. Should the minimum driving age change from 16 to 18 years old? Many young teens believe that it should remain at 16. Would it make a difference in two years? If the driving age remains at 16 years old, it will allow young drivers to increase their experience behind the wheel, give them more responsibility, and allow teen drivers to become more independent.

Turning sixteen-years-old is a milestone to many teenagers. In the majority of states, this is the age when adolescents become eligible for attaining a driver’s license. A growing number of people feel that the only way to truly prevent tragedy is to increase the driving age. Most teenagers and parents believe in this system, although many people feel that such action is necessary. A number of states in the United States have already increased the minimum age. These states use graduated licensing programs that put limitations on young drivers. The minimum age for attaining a driver’s license should be increased to 18-years-old due to numerous factors; these include emotional intelligence, disturbances while driving, and the underdevelopment of the brain.

Studies show that automobile accidents are the leading cause of death for teenagers. Car crashes have always been an outstanding problem when it comes to teenagers and driving. Teenagers, even after seeing the consequences, drive carelessly and do not think about the consequences when they are behind the wheel. There are a plethora of opinions and views when it comes to the legal driving age and the requirements to obtain a license. Many people all around the world believe that making changes to driving requirements is pointless and can potentially cause more problems. While what they say may be true, raising the legal driving age and the requirements would have a greater positive outcome, potentially leading to a decrease in the fatality rate along with gaining more responsible drivers.

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

“Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.” – P.J. O’Rourke. In 2013, two thousand-one hundred-sixty-three teens in the United States, age sixteen– nineteen, were killed and 243,243 were treated for injuries suffered in the car accidents. In simple terms, about six teenagers, age sixteen- nineteen, died every day from car crashes in that year! This problem needs to be resolved. Fortunately, there are solutions to decreasing motor crashes, like increasing the driving age to twenty-one. There’s been a great deal of controversy regarding if the driving age should be grown to twenty-one. Consider the driving age being brought up to twenty-one; teenagers are not adults yet (immature) and do not take driving seriously. Teens tend to not wear seatbelts and ride cars faster than adults, the risk of motor vehicle crashes is higher among sixteen- nineteen year olds than any other group of drivers, and teens may consume alcohol and/or text and drive.

There are a municipal of reasons why the driving age should be lowered. During the teen ages you are exposed to many real world experiences. Whether its driving to school, running errands, going to work having a license comes in handy. Also, it helps to be a safer driver so parents will be less worried when their children are driving on the highways. Most teens that are still in high school use driving in everyday task so why not grant them the responsibility of the road.