Dieing to Drive

Dieing to Drive

Every single day in the USA two people die in vehicles driven by sixteen year old drivers. (Davis) Every year there are more teen fatalities on the road than the amount of deaths reported from 9/11. (Oztalay) Parents and lawmakers alike would surely change their mind if the pros and cons were weighed out. Irving Slosberg, a Florida state representative who lost his fourteen year old daughter in a 1995 crash, proposed a law to raise the driving age. Most other lawmakers laughed at him. (Davis) Some Americans have seen this as a problem. Nearly two thirds of people polled in a “USA Today” survey say they think a sixteen year old is too young to have a driver’s license. But, many parents see the driving age as being ok because it helps eliminate parents from having to be chauffeurs. The statistics far out-weigh the convenience. The driving age in the United States should be raised to at least eighteen because sixteen year olds brains are too underdeveloped and immature, other nations have higher driving ages and more criteria to receive a license, and our economy will benefit.

By most physical measures, teenagers should be the world's best drivers. Their muscles are supple, their reflexes quick, their senses at a lifetime peak. Yet car crashes kill more of them than any other cause -- a problem, some researchers believe, that is rooted in the adolescent brain. (Williamson)

The issue of age as a risk factor in motor vehicle crashes has taken a new form in the emerging debate over the role of brain development. (CrossCurrents)

New findings from brain researchers at the National Institutes of Health explain why efforts to protect the youngest drivers usually fail. The weak link: what’s called “the executive branch” of the teen

brain- the part that weighs out risks, makes judgments and controls impulsive behavior is far underdeveloped in comparison to an eighteen. It has been proven that actually, the entire brain of a sixteen year is less developed than that of teens just a little older. (Davis)

Through statistics it has also been proven than older drivers, around eighteen years old, are safer drivers. In 2003, there were 937 drivers age sixteen that were involved in fatal crashes. This number is nearly five times the rate of twenty year old drivers. (Davis) Many people think that it is just that sixteen year olds need more experience. But, experience can do nothing for you when faced with a decision that your brain can physically not make. “Skills are a minor factor in most cases,” says Allan Williams, former chief scientist at the insurance institute. “It is really attitudes and emotions.” (qtd. in Davis) Through more research at the National Institutes of Health it is thoroughly shown that hormones are also running high, high enough for drivers to make wrong decisions. When a teenager is speeding, they are not thinking about death or injury, only

the thrill. There is concrete evidence and statistics that prove sixteen year olds are too underdeveloped and immature to have a license.

Other nations have already taken steps because of the mounting evidence that sixteen year olds should not be aloud behind a wheel by themselves. In Germany is where some of the toughest regulations are set in place. Sixteen year olds are not even aloud behind a wheel at all. Once a person has turned eighteen years old they are aloud to enter a driving school, which is expensive and rigorous. After they are taught in this formal driving school, they earn a two year probationary license. After the teen starts driving by his or her self if they make a mistake, such as running a red light their license will be revoked. France is another country that has more criteria for earning and keeping a license. There is no licensing to teens under eighteen years of age but, if a teen gets their parent’s signature and a driving school teacher’s signature, they can begin driver training. During this period, teens must drive twelve miles per hour under the speed limit. In Britain they have also taken a precautionary measure to help limit the amount of accidents. Drivers can receive their learning permit once they turn age seventeen, but must display a bright, red “L” on their license plate. They are also not aloud to drive on highways. Denmark is another nation that requires extensive driver education. Denmark actually requires a full class on just defensive driving. Teens there can get a learners permit at seventeen and a probationary license at age eighteen. To receive a fully unrestricted license they must hold a clean probationary license for three years. One area that has statstics to prove their strategy works in one of the United States neighbors,

Canada. After obtaining a learning permit at sixteen, drivers spend two years with restricted licenses with no night driving. To get a fully unrestricted license you must

complete a driver training course. Graduated licensing has cut crash rates by fifty percent for sixteen and seventeen year old during their first six months. (Davis) If other nations have seen the need to do more intense driver training and more strict regulations, the United States should also. In other nations it has been proved that by doing these extra precautionary measures it actually decreases the rate of accidents