Drinking While Driving Young

An intoxicated 16-year-old driving the wrong way on a bridge in Cincinnati crashed into a car, injuring five people and shutting down all southbound lanes early Friday morning. The crash occurred around 3:45 a.m. when the teen drove down West 5th Street in the wrong direction before going up the off-ramp into the I-75 Southbound lanes. The 16-year-old crashed head-on into another vehicle on the Brent Spence Bridge, according to court documents. There were five people in the juvenile’s car, according to Lt. Justin Bradbury with the Cincinnati Police. Four of the passengers were taken to multiple hospitals for “injuries ranging from minor injuries to broken bones.” The passenger in the other vehicle was taken to St. Elizabeth with minor injuries, police said. Court documents said 18-year-old Alexis Truett, one of the passengers, gave her car to the 16-year-old to drive, knowing he was intoxicated. She is being charged with Assault (complicity), Providing a motor vehicle to a drunk or drug addict, Criminal mischief (complicity), and Wanton endangerment (complicity). The bridge was shut down for approximately an hour after the crash. Truett is scheduled to have a preliminary hearing at 1:30 p.m. on April 2. Police said the juvenile will also face charges.

Drunk driving has plagued teens for over multiple generations. According to studies, every fifteen minutes, a teenager dies from a drunk driving incident. Of all the teen deaths in America, 60% of those deaths were due to car accidents that involved alcohol. Although there has been a decrease in the number of alcohol related car accidents amongst teenagers, it is still the leading cause of death among teens. In this essay, I will elaborate on drunk driving, the outcomes of drinking while intoxicated, the effects it causes in our communities, and ultimately, my solution to drunk driving and why I think my solutions will work.

Firstly, while discussing the detrimental impact of teen driving while intoxicated, we must also consider basic drunk driving statistics:

• Drunk driving takes the lives of approximately 28 to 30 people everyday, which is roughly one death almost every hour.

• Annually, 10.5k people die from drunk driving in America; 980 of those victims were 21 years old or younger.

In order to solve this huge problem, we must answer this question: Why are so many teenagers dying from drunk driving?

• Alcohol blurs your judgment. When an intoxicated teen thinks they are okay, they really are not. When we think we are capable of driving we are not.

• The more alcohol that is consumed, the more it negatively affects judgment and awareness is flawed.

• Many teenagers are immature, for the most part and their common sense and lack of wisdom will easily be amiss once alcohol is consumed.

• There are times when teenagers who have been drinking are alert enough to recognize their inability to safely drive and they will ask for help, however, this situation is not as common as it should be.

• Over several years, the government has stepped in and implemented laws and rules to help decrease teenage car accidents. In 1984, Congress passed The Federal Uniform Drinking Age Act of 1984, which raised the federal drinking age from 18 to 21 . This was beneficial in limiting car accidents due to teen drunk driving. In addition, laws have been passed to impose more aggressive punishment, which can encourage those who have been arrested for drunk driving to not do so again.

Although these changes have helped to decrease drunk driving and accidents, these efforts have not been enough to drastically lower drunk driving in teens. I, therefore, believe in order to effectively limit the number of teen deaths from drunk driving it is necessary to raise the driving age from 16 to 18. We have seen the effects of raising the legal drinking age has helped to combat drunk driving, so why not raise the driving age as well.

Another strategy could be creating vehicles equipped with start buttons that detects ones the consumption of blood alcohol levels by the year 2030. Due to technological advancements with automobile design, I believe we will be able to solve safety problems. It may sound like a crazy idea, but it is possible. In fact, President Biden passed the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which will require breathalyzers in all new cars, as soon as 2026. The prevention of driving while impaired (DWI) through technology and cars itself is not new, however, it is very much needed.

Understandably, these plans will be heavily unpopular and controversial, to say the least, however, it is the job of the government to serve and protect the lives of its citizens, even if that means creating laws that are not popular and favored by the public. Raising the driving age to 18 and creating mandatory systems in cars is an incredibly bold move, but I believe it can exponentially reduce the number of teen deaths by drunk driving. Drunk driving is a huge public safety issue and fighting against it will save so many lives and so much money as well.