Teen driver safety has been a public issue since teens started driving. The reason is the same reason that most freshmen don't start on the basketball team: experience. In every aspect of life, one must gain experience in said aspect before they can even be remotely proficient in it. Driver’s education helps teen drivers to gain experience in a way that keeps teen drivers and other drivers safe. Driver's education also teaches the rules of the road that most adults either violate, or don't explicitly teach their children. For example, (while learning to drive before driver's education,) I almost put myself and my father in a serious accident when I got a green light in the left turn lane. I had been taught that a green light means that you can go, but I had never been told that a green light in the left turn lane means you must wait for oncoming traffic to subside before turning. While driver’s education solves many teen driving issues, it doesn’t solve the biggest challenge facing teen drivers: distractions.
Distractions of all kinds will affect all drivers, whether it be an accident on the side of the road, or billboards, all distractions make roads more dangerous. However there is one distraction that harms teen drivers in particular more than any other group of drivers: cell phones. Cell phones are a distraction in every aspect of life. While writing this essay, I’ve had to take my eyes off the screen no less than 5 times for various phone related reasons. Imagine what that might cause if I were to be driving right now. Distracted teen driving has affected those I know from both sides of the story. 10 months ago, I had a teammate who was driving herself and her sister to school. Unfortunately, my teammate was using her cell phone during this drive. When she looked up from her phone she saw that she was hurtling towards a truck that had slowed down. She managed to hit the brake, and slow the car, but it was too late. The car was totaled and she was forced to ride with her dad to school for the rest of the year. I can’t imagine what would have happened if she hadn't looked up. Though the truth is that it never would have happened if she hadn't been using her phone. On the flip side, my uncles were almost killed by a teen driver using their phone. The teen had been going down the highway with their cruise control set, and my uncles had slowed down to make a turn into one of their fields. Because this was at highway speeds and the driver wasn't paying attention, it was a very high energy collision. The vice from the service truck ended up embedded in the engine block of the teens car, and even scarier, it had dented the propane tank. Had the teen been driving any faster, all three would have died in a fiery explosion.
It may seem that in the world we live in today, it would be impossible to get teens to stop using their cell phones for any reason, much less to get them to put it down while driving. Fortunately there are ways to solve this. For teens, the best solution is peer pressure. (Yes it can do good too.) Simply refusing to ride with someone who texts and drives can make them stop using their phone while driving, at least for that ride. For parents, “Out of sight, Out of mind” works best. Find a place for your teen to place their phone where they won’t be able to see it. For most it could be the center console. For me it's the cigarette box holder located below the steering wheel. And finally, for communities, awareness must be promoted. Find any way you can to force how deadly texting while driving is onto kids. And make it as uncomfortable as possible. No one ever thinks it will happen to them until it happens to someone close to them.
There is no way to end teen distracted driving, and there is no way to end their use of cell phones on the road. But if we can get the vast majority of teens to keep their eyes on the road while driving, in conjunction with driver’s education, we can make our roads significantly safer. When our roads are safer, we reduce the number of accidents, and when we reduce the number of accidents, we save lives.