1Research

Table of Contents Should The Driving Age Be Raised.......................................................................................3 Research.................................................................................................................................4 Bibliography ..........................................................................................................................5

Outline I. Introduction II. Rising The Driving Age A. Statistics B. Research III. Conclusion

Should The Driving Age Be Raised?

Hyerin Park Mr. Coyner English Period 1 11 August 2011 Should The Driving Age Be Raised? We all know that teenagers cannot wait until they are sixteen to drive on their own. The only problem to that is that some teenagers are not responsible enough, not mature enough, and are easily distracted. This can cause them to have fatal accidents. Changing the driving age would solve numerous problems on the road and save thousands of lives. Not only teens die, but others that are involved in an accident they caused. Research The bottom line is that when we look at the research, raising the driving age saves lives, says Adrian Lund, the president of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. The Institute has also researched and clearly pointed out that a higher driving age considerably reduces the crash rates for young drivers. Of course, many teens hate the idea. According to the National Highway Safety Administration, the rates of crashes per mile driven by sixteenyear-olds are almost ten times the rate for drivers between the ages of thirty to fifty-nine (Irvine, par. 9). In 2007, more than four thousand teens have died as passengers of vehicles; sixty-one percent of them were in cars driven by their peers (Lund, par. 7). Rising the driving age would save lives. Citizens should start realizing that its not only dangerous for teenagers but it can also affect the elder and younger. In the 1990s, sixty-three thousand teens from ages fifteen to nineteen died in traffic accidents. There was not much of a vast difference back then until today. The immaturities of some teenagers have a racer boy attitude and would compete against with other peers, which gives them a great amount of risking their lives.

About forty percent of the accidents among teens involve alcohol. Twenty-three percent of teenage drivers that are involved in fatal car accidents have blood-alcohol level about the legal limit of .08 noted by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (Teenage Drunk Driving Statistics). Peer pressure and other reasons cause teenagers to be stressed, which seems to be leading to alcohol. According to the brain researchers in the National Institute of Health, they have learned that the head branch of a teenagers brain, which is the part that weighs risks, make judgments and controls the impetuous behavior, is not fully developed until they are adults. Teenagers are not ready to take on this big responsibility if this still continues to grow. Most car accidents can be prevented. Its the distraction that keeps teenagers to be involved in accidents all the time. They are most likely going to take their eyes off the road and start doing other things. The National Highway Safety Traffic Administration reports that teenage drivers have the most distractions that can take their eyes off the roads constantly. According to the NHTSA and VTTI study, the distractions that lead to car accidents are: cell phone use, reaching for an object inside the vehicle, reading or applying makeup (California Department of Motor Vehicles). The number of fatal accidents among teenagers will decrease greatly if the driving age is raised. Its unexpected of what teenagers will do, which is being wild, not being responsible, and not taking driving seriously. Even though parents are tired of being taxi drivers for their children everyday, risking the lives of young teens should be last in their options. Thousands of lives would be saved if these sixteen-year-olds cannot drive. If the teenagers would prefer not being dropped and picked up by parents everyday, theres another

solution to that: public transportation.

Bibliography "Teenage Drunk Driving Statistics | AccidentAttorneys.com." Accident Lawyers: Find Injury Lawyers, File a Claim, Get a Free Case Review | AccidentAttorneys.com. n.d. Web. 15 Feb. 2011. <http://www.accidentattorneys.com/teenage-dui-stats.cfm>.

"Driver Distractions." California Department of Motor Vehicles. n.d. Web. 15 Feb. 2011. <http:// dmv.ca.gov/pubs/brochures/fast_facts/ffdl28.htm>.

"Should the Driving Age Be Raised? More than 5,000 Teenagers Die Each Year in Car Accidents. Some Say They're Getting behind the Wheel Too Early | New York Times Upfront | Find Articles at BNET." Find Articles at BNET | News Articles, Magazine Back Issues & Reference Articles on All Topics. n.d. Web. 15 Feb. 2011. <http://findarticles.com/p/articles/ mi_m0BUE/is_14_141/ai_n31875072/>.

Rubin, Rita. "Report Makes a Case for Raising Driving Age - USATODAY.com." News, Travel, Weather, Entertainment, Sports, Technology, U.S. & World USATODAY.com. 9 Sept. 2008. Web. 15 Feb. 2011. <http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2008-09-09-teen-drivers_N.htm>.

"Teenage Drunk Driving Risks." Talking Bar Breathalyzer Helps Prevent Drunk Driving. n.d. Web. 15 Feb. 2011. <http://www.alcoholalert.com/teenage-drunkdriving.html>.