Drunk driving is the leading cause of death for people from the age of six to thirty-three years old (Curran, 1). One in three people will be involved in an alcohol-related crash in their lifetime (MADD, 1). Everyday thirty-six people in the United States die due to the crashes and approximately 700 more are injured in car crashes that involve alcohol-impaired drivers. This year, 10,839 people will die in drunk-driving crashes; one every fifty minutes (MADD, 1). “Cracking down on those who take drugs or drink and then drive is a year round commitment for Warwickshire and West Mercia.”- West Mercia Police.
I believe the typical 16 year old doesn’t have the maturity level that is needed to be behind the wheel of a car unsupervised. The amount of deaths that are caused by teenage drivers are very high, and are still increasing because no changes have been made. There are about 15 deaths per day from car accidents between the ages of 15-20. ( Teen Driving). Teens also account for 14% of all driving fatalities that occur.
“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)”. (Clark, 1992). Even though drinking and driving is a crime thousands of teens continue to get behind the wheel and kill thousands of innocent people in alcohol related crashes every year. There are drunken accidents because teens don’t take drinking and driving seriously. Teens just want to feel the pleasure and they want to feel good but don’t think about the other people or even there selves that they can kill on the road.
7/13/12 In the United States distracted driving is cause to more than 8,000 automobile accidents a day. The drivers that are most likely to be offenders to this are the youngest and the most inexperienced on the road. Out of the drivers involved in the accidents caused by distractions 16% of them are under the age of 20. So what are these driver distractions you may ask, they include texting, usage of a cell phone or smart phone, eating and drinking, talking to passengers, self grooming, reading, including maps, usage of a navigation system, watching a video, or adjusting the radio, cd player, or mp3 player. Types of distracted driving varies, there are visual
Name: Brandon Adrien Teen Driving Issues Project Topic: Drunk Driving |Section Heading |Information | |Why is this a problem, |This is truly a great problem because according to the DMV, being intoxicated while driving is a common cause | |especially for teen |of very serious crashes, especially those that are fatal, involving teenage drivers. | |drivers? | | |Statistics from |More than 10,000 people die by drunk driving and hundreds of thousands have been injured. | |research regarding teen|Every year, about 708,000 people get injured in crashes related to alcohol. | |crash rates.
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.
“If you put a 20-year-old driver behind the wheel with a cell, phone their reaction times are the same as a 70-year-old driver who is not using a cell phone,” said University psychology professor David Strayer. Drivers under the age of twenty do not have fast reflexes. Teenagers think they can talk or text message while driving, but they really can not. It will only lead to accident, or worse, a
“Incidents of “road rage” were up 51% in the first half of the decade, according to a report from the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety,” writes Andrew Ferguson in Road Rage (553). It’s sad that due to road rage many innocent commuters suffer the consequences. It has also happened to me while driving; because I’m driving to slow, the person behind me starts to blow the horn. And, it makes thing worse because then I will get mad and drive even slower. In Road Rage, Ferguson points out that in a recent survey that the Coalition for Consumer Health and Safety did, 64% of the people mentioned that they are driving less mannerly and more recklessly than they did about five years ago (553).
The clamour heightened in recent weeks following a series of reports on road fatalities and fatal crashes involving motorists in this age group. Accident statistics released by the authorities have also indicated that motorists below the age of 25 years are the group most prone to mishaps. While car accident statistics involving young drivers are quite alarming, it can be argued that such statistics are at best telling only half the story. In their simplistic form, certain statistics on road crashes can even be misleading. For example, when we were told not too long ago that only three out of 10 road accidents in the country involved female motorists, it still did not mean that men were worse drivers than women.
If you were traveling at 55mph, that's enough time to cover the length of a football field while blindfolded! American drivers in their 20’s make up over 27 percent of the overall ‘distracted’ drivers involving fatalities; 10 percent of which are under the age of 20. Of that group, it includes the largest quantity of ‘distracted-driver’ accidents in the US. There needs to be tighter regulations on cellphone use while driving. With the population boom, just about everyone has a Millennial in their family or at least knows of one.