March 26, 2015, two teens killed in a terrible car crash accident at Ohio, involving a salon car and a transit truck, two weeks earlier the same scenario happened in the nearby county, but this time with an even intense magnitude. These are the cases that the traffic police departments all over the world have to deal with every year. In a report released by U.S Department of Transportation on June 2011, up to 4,946 teenagers aged between 13 and 19 died in the year 2007 alone in car accidents involving teenage drivers. In their recent 2013 accident reports, 2524 teenagers lost their lives through motor vehicle accidents involving teen drivers alone, quite a decrease from 2007 but again still a high number of deaths. Judging from these records, the world is losing a great deal of its young people through motor vehicle accidents. However, this number of deaths can be reduced significantly, if the driving age can be raised to 18 years (Green and Kirk p, 54). In this paper, I will discuss why minors below the age of 18 years are not fit to be drivers and also why raising the driving ages to 18 years can reduce drastically the number of accidents happening on our roads.
In a report released by the Clinical Psychology Associates of North Central Florida, teens below the age of 18 are twice as likely to be affected by a condition called Attention-deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). ADHD is a growth-related syndrome that disappears as one grows up into maturity. According to this report, adolescent drivers are unable to pay double attentions while driving and thus get distracted much easily than adults. In most cases, these amateurs are unable to operate their phones safely while driving. Moreover, they are unable to respond safely to emotive feelings emanating from such gadgets. For this reason, teenagers should be granted permission to drive once the ADHD condition has reduced. Otherwise, giving a fourteen year old a car to drive is suicidal, since you are never sure of their ability to handle the distractors on the roads (Green and Kirk p52).
On another point, teen drivers lack in terms of experience in dealing with knotty traffic incidences. When teenagers are involved in dilemma accident situations, they often panic and further worsen the situation. The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in a recent survey noted that as many as 86 percent of graders between 14 and 16 years admit to using their cell phones while driving. This however is not the issue, the key question is, and what if another oncoming car lost control and headed for this kid’s car? What is the best thing for the kid to do? Will he or she manage to control the car maturely to save his life? Well, the answer is that the chances are minimal that the teenager will control his car to evade an oncoming car. Why? Because of panicking. Probably, if it was an adult driving the car, most likely he would manage to control it on the side walk or grasses and at least save his own life. Evaluating such speculated incidences we can clearly see that teens below 18 years are not yet ready to handle such tricky instances on the roads.
Another rationale that can be used to judge the credibility of teenage drivers being safe drivers is their psychological stability. Teenagers that are in their early adolescence stages are susceptible to many emotional upheavals. These emotional imbalances may affect their ability to think rationally while driving (Vanlaar and et al p387). In addition, they have a problem in dealing with feelings such as pride, infatuations and anger. If you give a teenager a car to drive while in such a state, most likely he might cause an accident from emotional distresses. Psychologists point out that if teenagers are to become credible drivers on our roads, then trainers should aim to teach them more than the basic driving skills. Teenagers should be exposed to more complex driving situations after basic skills are mastered. They should be trained how to deal with various emergencies on the roads (Young, John and Michael p59).
Conclusively, raising the driving ages to 18 years will see a drastic reduction in the number of accidents happening on our roads now that only emotionally mature people will be driving. Judging from the three facts discussed in this paper, granting minors under the age of eighteen, the mandate to drive is a fatal mistake. Thus traffic regulations should be reviewed yet again, to allow for the official driving age to be eighteen years, to alleviate this loss of young lives on our roads.