The United States legal driving age varies from one state to another in which many of the states the minimum age requirement is lower than eighteen years. Many of the states want to raise the driving age while some of the states are against raising the driving age. In the recent past, there have been pleas to raise the driving licence age requirement to 18 years. To better understand this debate a description of both arguments for and against raising the driving age will be evaluated.
I support the idea of raising the driving age in the United States because teenagers cannot be considered emotionally or mentally mature to drive. Young drivers are considered to overestimate their driving skills because emotionally they believe they are capable to drive better than experienced drivers (De Craen et.al., 2010). For the teens to safely drive on the roads will require them to be mature enough to face and handle effectively some of the situations that are encountered in the roads such are mere and grisly residents. Teenagers, since they are not mature, will have many distractions on the roads such as the road music playing in their cars which might cause them to drive very carelessly becoming a threat to everyone on the road. Similarly, the teens are associated with tendencies to ignore road safety measures such as the use of belts due to their underdeveloped mentalities that in case of any accident will deprive their lives. In the argument of Mike Higgins stated that “If they continue to lower the driving age then expect the fatalities to increase.” Thus removing the privilege that many teenagers are having on driving will help to secure the future for the kids.
It is safer to raise the driving age because the majority of the accidents on the roads are caused by teens due to reckless driving. There are many roads crashes rates for young drivers compared to the older experienced drivers (Curry et al., 2015). In the road Raising the driving age amongst the teens will help them to be more experienced and avoid making rash decisions to cut down the number of deaths that are caused by fatal road accidents. When children are getting older they develop a sense of responsibility that will help them to be more responsible and be more aware of possible outcomes of driving carelessly thus frequency of the car accidents associated with teens will be lowered (McKnight et al., 2003).
Raising the driving age will make teens be more active by walking to different places. When the option of driving is removed for the teens under the age of 18 years will cause many teens to ride bikes or walk to many places. Similarly, teens will be able to reduce the level of obesity among the teens and ensure they have an opportunity to have physical exercise. The lowest level of exercise plays a very crucial to stay emotionally and physically healthy thus raising the minimum driving age will help to improve the overall health of teenagers.
On a different argument, raising the driving age for teenagers would delay them from acquiring the valuable experience that will help them to drive well on the roads. Practice makes perfect thus the evident cases of road accidents may not mean that higher crash rates for the teenagers are resulted from them being new to driving but lacking sufficient experience to drive. Russ Rader states that “it would clearly help if the driving age were raised. But it never has gained any traction in most places to simply raise the age.” Raising the driving age would delay the teenagers from learning how to drive that causing the crash rates to be shifted to the age over 18 years.
De Craen, Saskia, et al. “Do young novice drivers overestimate their driving skills more than experienced drivers? Different methods lead to different conclusions.” Accident analysis & prevention 43.5 (2011): 1660-1665.
Curry, Allison E., et al. “Young driver crash rates by licensing age, driving experience, and license phase.” Accident Analysis & Prevention 80 (2015): 243-250.
McKnight, A. James, and A. Scott McKnight. “Young novice drivers: careless or clueless?.” Accident Analysis & Prevention 35.6 (2003): 921-925.
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