Don’t Know, Don’t Care

Don’t
Know, Don’t Care

The
majority of teenagers in the United States take a rather cavalier
approach to driving. They eagerly await their 15^th or 16^th
birthday, yearning to get out on the road and have the freedom to
drive wherever and whenever they want to. The unfortunate issue with
this phenomenon is that the average American teenager is nowhere near
literate enough in the rules of the road to safely drive. And yet,
61% of teens have a driver’s license. Many of them take advantage
of lax road test rules, and care very little about how well they
understand the laws of driving. They are so eager to be able to
drive, that they disregard the necessary precautions for safe
driving.

Time
and time again, I hear kids at my school talking about all the people
they drove back from a party, or how they drove back from a friend’s
house at one in the morning and snuck in. Of course, in none of these
situations did they stop to think that they might only be allowed to
drive one person in their car under state law, or that they cannot be
out driving past 11 p.m. More important than the potential legal
ramifications of these actions, though they may be harsh, is the real
danger that distracted, inexperienced drivers pose to everyone else
on the road. Drivers under the age of 20 make up the largest
percentage of distracted drivers, and those distractions can be
fatal. Whether the driver is listening to loud music, chatting with
their friends, or glancing at a text, an infinitesimal slip in
concentration can lead to disastrous results.

The
most effective way to avoid the aforementioned situations is to
educate the people who will be behind the wheel. I know for a fact
that my friends, and any other teenagers who drive, would think twice
about making poor driving decisions if they understood their own
limitations, as well as the consequences that come with overreaching
them. Every driver should be conscious of the dangers of unsafe
driving practices, and that must start young. If it does not, these
young drivers will learn it the hard way, when they, or a friend or
family member gets into an accident, or worse, even dies because of
poor decision-making by themselves or another driver. With quality
driving education, we can reduce the number of preventable accidents,
by ensuring that every young adult who gets behind the wheel has a
complete grasp of the communal responsibility for safety that comes
with the ability to drive.