Michael Walker Soares Composition II February 7, 2014 Seat Belts: The Difference Between Life and Death Putting a seatbelt on is one of the easiest tasks any person can do in comparison to all of the other tasks a driver must do. It can and will save lives if it is used properly. At the same time there are people who forget everyday to put their seatbelts on. Most people do not believe that a piece of polyester that is woven together can save their lives, and therefore they choose not to wear them. Only about 60 percent of all drivers today wear their seatbelts, and according to Oklahoma state university, that is one of the leading causes in car accident fatality(“study mode”).
“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.
The first reason that seat belts should be mandatory is that seat belts reduce the risk of injuries to a vehicles occupants in the event of an accident. Seat belts restrain a vehicles occupants in the event of a crash limiting major and minor injuries, primarily to the head. Permanent injury is 50% more likely to occur in a vehicle accident when not wearing a seat belt (JMU, 2004, para.1). A study done lead by Rutledge (1993) on people involved in car accidents showed that 44.5% of people in a car accident not wearing a seat belt suffered head injuries. The study also showed that the average amount of days spent in a hospital after a car accident when the victim was wearing a seat belt was 10.5.
On average, drivers spend more than half their time driving engaged in distractive behavior. Most of the drivers on the road, about 94%, would agree that sending e-mails or text messages while driving is not acceptable and about 87% of drivers support laws against reading, typing or send text messages or e-mails while driving. But unfortunately in this day in age, multi-tasking is simply just a fact of life; everyone will face constant demand for their time, and will feel the need to juggle more things at once now than ever before. And the bad part of that is people try to multi-task while driving, and that is never a good idea (AAA foundation). Another concern in many different communities around the United States is the distracted teen driver, not just the adult.
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). We all know that road rage can be cause due to many reasons like stress at work and problems at home. Ferguson also points out that road rage could be solve if we had more police and tougher punishments (556), but we all know that won’t really help. I don’t even think that therapy for those road rage individuals would help. We all just have to pray every time we get into a car and just have patience.
Your conversation can wait put the phone away. Many states have laws and probations but not one completely bans all cellphone use for all age groups.1 All phone use in a vehicle is responsible for unnecessary accidents, not just texting. About twenty eight percent of accidents are linked to phone use in the vehicle.2 When just over a quarter of accidents are caused by such carelessness I think it’s time to do something about the root problem. Texting drivers spend about ten percent of their driving time outside their lane.1 All phone use is responsible and should be banned not just texting. Approximately 1.4 million accidents occur during phone conversations and two hundred thousand from texting.3 Texting drivers may be as impaired as a driver who is legally drunk.
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.
They create nearly 1.5 billion tons of CO2 each year”. Bluejay, claims that most ozone pollution is caused by motor vehicles, which account for 72% of nitrogen oxides and 52% of reactive hydrocarbons (principal components of smog)”. Bluejay also said “Car emissions kill 30,000 people each year in the U.S. Riding a bike to work will save money, and help the environment. But driving to work will actually do the opposite.
Essay 2. Cars have been the worlds most efficient way of transport since they have been invented. I assume that this question is considering banning the cars because of the accidents they have been involved in. However, accidents that are car related have been caused by more than 90% by humans, through either fatigue, bad driving skills, drink driving, speeding, or distractions in general. Only 10% of accidents that cars have been involved in are caused by mechanical failures.
Even those Bluetooth headsets raise the potential risk of an accident. Even though a person’s hands may be free of the cellular device, he or she is still being distracted by the conversation. Cell phone usage while driving causes 2,500 deaths and 330,000 injuries in the United States every year. People who drive while talking on a cell phone raise the risk of an accident or death. Recent studies show that a person driving while talking on a cell phone has less awareness of the road than a person who is driving drunk.