Teenage Drinking Raising the drinking age to 25 years old will prevent teenage drinking. “The strongest evidence for reducing alcohol-related harm is by increasing the price and reducing the availability”(Raising legal). Alcohol is a dangerous drug that causes accidents and deaths every year. Every year there are records of driving while intoxicated for under age drinkers. So raising the age of which you can consume alcohol will result in less accidents and deaths caused by drinking.
The argument is a big decision for whether it should be raised or shouldn't it be raised because of the consequences of both sides. There are many reasons why the legal driving age shouldn’t be raised, including: more deaths/accidents would occur in the 18-year-old range, parents wouldn’t be able to have as much control of their teen driver, and parents would have to drive their kids around all the time. Making the legal driving age be 18 instead of 16 would have harsh consequences. First, if the driving age were raised
The drinking age should not be lowered to 18. Lowering the drinking age from 21 years old to 18 years old could lead to an increase in dangerous behavior such as drunken driving and car accidents, risk of developing alcoholism and people under the age of 21 do not fully understand the dangers of alcohol. A teenage driver and alcohol is a dangerous combination. Drinking and driving accidents are the number one cause of death among teenagers. “Traffic deaths from drunken driving have fallen steadily, with those involving teenagers 16 to 19 declining by 39.1 percent from 1982 to 1990, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA)”.
The amount of lives that can be saved by raising the driving age to 18 would be very large. Teens are just not responsible enough to have this responsibility. “ There is evidence to suggest that the part of the brain that assesses risk and controls impulsive behavior is not fully developed until the age 25 (23 for females), providing a physical reason why restrictions such as night curfews and limiting peer passengers is so important”. ( Professor Cass) One of the leading causes of teenage accidents is inexperience. Teenage drivers don’t have the experience of driving a car.
One can argue that teenagers would gain more experience with time if the driving age were to be increased. “The risk of being involved in a car accident is the highest for drivers aged 16- to 19-year-olds than it is for any other age group. For each mile driven, teen drivers ages 16 to 19 are about four times more likely than other drivers to crash.” (Brown) With these statistics it is interesting that drivers’ education is not made mandatory for new drivers. Teens are known as greater risk takers relative to adults. Another possible issue is that teenagers do not fully understand the rules of the road; some may say teenagers are too young to grasp the consequences of irresponsible driving, or some may feel that the rules do not apply to them.
Speeding, texting while driving and other distractions played a part in the deaths. The article goes on to state that because teens are immature and have inexperience there is potential for disaster. The main idea of the article focuses on different ways and steps that will prevent crashes and save lives of teenage drivers and others on the road. It's pointed out that because teens' prefrontal cortex is not fully formed, teens have a hard time not acting on impulse. Another problem they have is some don't see the risks or don't care.
The drinking age isn't meant to be a big deal, but the first couple years of lowering the drinking age could cause many students to be reckless. There are many responsibilities that come along with drinking at a low age, most importantly drinking and driving. Lowering the age will reduce all such problems, but at first will seem extremely hectic. Lowering the current drinking age of 21-and-over will allow young Americans, most of who are perfectly capable of drinking responsibly; to no longer drink in private or in short amounts of time, thus alleviating potentially dangerous conditions. Drinking privately is extremely unsafe and when kids are in a situation they can't handle, they can then ask for help.
Teen drinking is one of the leading causes to deaths and can also cause damages on growth and health for them. The consumption of alcohol in adolescents has a different effect on them then it does for a grown man or woman. Califano proves Reid’s idea that the English and Europeans have fewer drinking problems than we do in the states to be wrong by stating, “British fifteen and sixteen year olds were more than twice as likely as Americans to binge drink (50% vs. 24%) and to have been intoxicated within the past thirty day (48% vs. 21%).” Continuing to support this he uses another statistic by The World Health Organization that found that British boys and girls were far likelier than U.S. equals to have been drunk twice or more by the age fifteen. After discussing how with a lower drinking age teens will drink more often, Califano then goes on to talk about the consequences that teen drinking has on their growth and health issues. One fact he presents is that even a teen drinking at a responsible rate can cause damage in the brain that is long term and irreversible.
Safer Driving for Senior Citizen Amy Allen Bryant and Stratton PHIL250: Practices in Analytical Thinking J.R. Kuntz October 24, 2012 Senior citizen drivers are putting themselves and others in danger when driving. Studies show that drivers at the age of 80 and older are involved in more fatal car crashes, as much as 5.5 times, as middle aged drivers (Risky Drivers, 2012). This is not because they are dangerous and reckless drivers. In fact, senior citizen drivers are more likely to follow the rules of the road, but it is due to declines in their motor skills, vision, perceptual and cognitive abilities that cause accidents to occur (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration [NHTSA], 2005). Because of their declining health, I feel that educational services need to be offered, more friendly vehicles for senior citizens need to be made, and easier to read traffic signs should be made and more efficiently placed.
Drinking- What Age? Assignment: : Write a paragraph in which you argue or persuade your reader that the legal age for driving a car should be lowered or raised or that there should be a maximum age at which a person is allowed to drive. Do sixteen year olds have a higher rate of accidents? Yes, it is true that sixteen year olds have a higher rate of accidents in their first year of driving than any other age group; however changing the driving age will only change the statistics against eighteen year olds. If the law is changed, eighteen year olds will substitute the first year driving statistics for sixteen year olds.