Legal Age to Drive Should Be Raised to 21 - 1443 Words

Teen drivers are every adult’s nightmare. With the lack of experience and maturity, both parents and fellow drivers are frightened to share the road with adolescents. Through much research, juveniles as a whole have proven to be incapable of obtaining respectable driving skills. According to â€Å"Rocky Mountain Insurance Information Association,† motor vehicle crashes were the leading cause of death among 13-19 year old males and females in the United States. Culpable for this statistic is the three main distractions: visual (taking one’s eyes off the road), manual (taking one’s hands off the wheel), and cognitive (takings one’s mind away from the driving task). Factors causing these distractions are cell phones, passengers, and adolescent’s†¦show more content†¦This study was conducted by comparing decision making in both adolescents and adults while driving alone and with a peer. The results were somewhat predicable. The study sho wed that adolescents and adults performed comparably when alone (both making 45% risky decisions). But when a peer was present, adolescents took significantly more risks compared to adults. Adolescents made 57% risky decisions while adults only made 50% risky decisions. The difference in percentage may not seem like much of a difference visually but when you look at the trial conducted with a large sample size comparing the number of crashes between adolescents and adults, the disparity is clearly evident. While driving alone, both adolescents and adults crashed about 4 times, but when a peer was present the number of adolescent car crashes increased to about 6 crashes while the number of adult car crashes decreased to 3 car crashes. As projected, adolescents, but not adults, suffered from increased risky decisions with the presence of a peer. Such outcomes have been imitated in past findings (Gardner Steinberg, 2005), which from a scientific point, proves that adolescents arenâ₠¬â„¢t mature enough to drive with peers. Sure, statistics prove that juveniles drive just as safely as adults when they are alone, but how many times are they driving alone each day. Teens sure aren’tShow MoreRelatedLowering the Legal Drinking Age to 18 Essay748 Words   |  3 PagesLowering the Legal Drinking Age to 18 Sarah, an eighteen-year-old college freshman, walks into a convenience store and moves timidly to the back, hoping that no one she knows will see her. Opening the refrigerator door, she pulls out a chilled case of Coors Light. Sarah nervously approaches the cashier, with her fake ID ready to be shown, and places the case of beer on the counter. 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