Raising the National legal driving age from 16 to 18

RUNNING HEAD : TEENAGERS AND DRIVING

Teenager and Driving

Why raising the legal driving age could save lives

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One of the most important safety issues in the United States is how to protect people on the roads . Each year thousands of Americans die in vehicular accidents and among that group are thousands of American teenagers who die in accidents each year , which has spawned one of the more controversial movements towards safety in the country : raising the legal driving age from 16 to

18 . The movement is not without merit and deserves a strong perusal by Americans around the country , despite the fact that most teenagers disagree with it . In to save lives , the legal driving age in the United States must be raised to 18 and more laws regarding teenage driver put into effect as we as a country move towards making our roads safer for drivers of all ages

The strongest argument for raising the legal driving age is the astounding statistics about teen drivers . Not surprisingly , car crashes are responsible for the most deaths of teenagers in the United States today "About 6 ,000 teen drivers are killed in auto accidents each year--more fatalities for this age group than those caused by guns and drug overdoses combined (Henderson , 2006 . Within the course of the last nine years , teenage drivers killed over 30 ,000 people across the nation "of which 36 percent were the teen drivers themselves (AAA 2006 . These young drivers have a fatality rate that is "four times as high as that of drivers 25 to 29 (AAA , 2006 . So what does this mean for the safety of teenagers on the road ? Truthfully , all of the statistics and all of the research supports a legal driving age of 18 years old because it is clear that young drivers are more at risk , not only because of their inexperience , which is a large part of the concern of many , but because teenagers are more apt to take risks on road and show off to their friends . Sixteen year old Leanne Smith of Williamsport , Maryland echoed these sentiments "Sixteen-year-olds do stupid things when they 're driving . They show off for their friends . If kids had to wait until they were older to get a license , there wouldn 't be so much of that (Rinaldo , 2005 . Automobiles are a deadly weapon and yet most states let teenagers get their driver 's permit at the age of 15 and begin driving on their own at 16 . Without changing the way teenagers learn to drive they will never be any safer (D 'Amico and Korokna-Palicz 2006 . The key to creating good drivers is to

By raising the legal driving age and rethinking the way that teenagers receive their license in the first place , the country may be able to make their roads safer and keep their young people alive to see their eighteenth birthday . In fact , there is evidence that even one year...