How Young Is Too Young To Drive?

How young is too young to drive? It is a major topic in America today. Many feel that sixteen, the basic licensing age, is too young to operate a car. Should a law be passed which changes the legal driving age from sixteen to nineteen? Granted, finding out to drive is a teenage right of passage however teens are statistically the worst motorists in the public domain. For that reason, I support altering the legal driving age for the above factor as well as the following three reasons: it will avoid teenager deaths, reduce adult stress and save moms and dads money.

First off, securing human life should be necessary to everybody.

The Mothers Against Driving While Intoxicated (MADD) site attributes 6,000 of the 42,000 yearly automobile deaths to teens. My finest friend's brother passed away 2 weeks prior to his seventeenth birthday because he accepted a ride with a buddy who was unsure how to continue through a crossway. Larry Musselman, director of the teen-driving institute at Safe America Foundation, thinks mishaps like the one including my friend's bro take place since the decision-making part of the brain does not grow till the late teens and early twenties.

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If motorists were forced to wait till eighteen for licensure they would make much better decisions on the roadway.

Granted, some teenagers grow before others, however, that does no indicate their parents stop fretting about them. Take for instance the March 28, 2006 Daily Herald Short article entitled "Lead Foot Puts Teenager in Deep Doo-Doo," which covered the trial of a seventeen year old girl ticketed two times for speeding 2 months in a row.

The judge, also a parent, asked the woman if she thought about that her mom prays she will get home in one piece whenever the lady drives somewhere. This very same concern is why my auntie Debra prefers to drive my cousins to a number of the locations they need to go, particularly, throughout rush-hour.

As study by A F Williams shows that the crash rate for sixteen year olds is 241 per 10,000 within the first month of licensure and only drops to 107 per 10,000 after 9 to 10 months. Changing the legal driving age will effectively confront parental concerns about their teens driving before they are mature enough. Finally, parents worried about the safety of their teens must also consider how much it costs to have a teenage driver in the household. My uncle Mike refused to buy his daughters a car until they got jobs and could pay either their car payments or insurance.

To be sure, car insurance is expensive for the parents of teens because driver risk profiles (which decide cost) consider the frequency and likelihood of accidents. According to the Christian Science Monitor, 3 out of very 10 sixteen year old drivers will be in a serious crash. Phil Berardelli, a highway safety advocate, urges parents to consider the costs involved in repairing a car that a sixteen year old will very likely wreck. If parents pay for the repairs their child pays a moral cost by not learning responsibility. If the child pays for the repairs then they spend money potentially set a side for college expenses.

It is an inescapable conclusion that parents save when their teens drive as more mature eighteen year olds. To reiterate my point, a law should be passed changing the legal driving age from16 to 18. Doing so would prevent teen deaths, while decreasing parental stress and saving parents money. Moreover, America’s roads, a public domain for all, would be a safer domain for all.

Works Cited

1. Franklin, Stefanie. “Raising Driving Age May Raise Safety: Recent Legislation Attempts to Reduce Teen Auto Deaths. ” Daily Titan 3 Mar. 2005. 12 Oct. 2006 <http://www. daily titan.com/ media/storage/paper861/news/2005/03/22/News/Raising.
2. Driving. Age. May. Raise. Safety-1538494. shtml? norewrite200610131501&sourcedomain=www. dailytitan. com>. Llana, Sara Miller. “Massachusetts Considers Raising the Driving Age to Curb Car Accidents Among Teens. ” The Christian Science Monitor. 29 Mar. 2006. 12 Oct. 2006 <http://www. csmonitor. com/2006/0329/p02s02-ussc. htm>.
3. Williams, A F, Ferguson, S A, and Shope, J T. “Rationale for Graduated Licensing and the Risks It Should Address. ” Injury Prevention. 8(Suppl II) (2002): ii9-ii16. Downloaded on 12 October 2006 from <http://www. ip. bmjjournals. com>.