Motor vehicle accidents have been a leading cause of death for teenagers for years, and there is an article on the news in my hometown typically three to four times a year. There have been incidents that range from simple fender benders to flipped cars and deaths. There are multiple fender benders on a weekly basis in a high school parking lot and that is usually due to distraction and lack of experience. Our generation is consistently distracted by our phones whether that is texting our friends, calling our mom, queuing music, or turning in the assignment on Canvas that is due in 15 minutes. Studies have shown that there is a societal addiction to phones and they affect us in almost every area of our life, driving included. When I was younger, I was in the car with my grandma and we were fully stopped at a red light then a teenage girl who had been on her phone hit us at 60 mph. There were no death casualties but my grandma had whiplash and soreness for a while and her car was totaled. All because someone was on their phone rather than looking ahead while behind the wheel. It is very interesting to look around while driving, being at a stoplight or on the highway or mid left turn, and seeing how many people are looking down at a screen.

There was also a devastating situation in my town where a teenager was charged with manslaughter because they fell asleep at the wheel on the way home from a ski trip. Distraction comes from more forms than technology, but also tiredness or even conversation with peers in the car. Teenage drivers would benefit from having a better understanding and awareness of when to pull over and stop the car due to factors like tiredness!

I had the wonderful opportunity to be overseas for about nine months and one of the obvious differences from the United States in these other countries was the culture of driving. During my time in Asia, specifically India and Nepal, I saw almost no one on their phones while driving. And there are SO MANY people on the road it would send the average American into a coma. Those who are convinced that Los Angeles or New York City or Chicago have the worst traffic have not had the chance to travel to India with a population of 1.4 billion which is approximately four times the United States which is at a population of 340 million. I lived in the city of Kolkata, India for about five weeks and experienced the city that is ranked with the worst traffic in all of India and second worst globally. All while observing that the drivers were not distracted on phones or anything else, and minimal car accidents occurred. And with those odds, the cars are also right over an inch away from one another and there are seven lanes of traffic going across a seven lane intersection.

In other countries, the driving laws are typically older as well, people usually can not drive a car until they are 18 years old. And it is very common for them to begin with driving motorcycles or scooters before learning to drive a car. Cars are also almost all manual which adds the factor that both hands are required to drive and be attentive at all times. I would also argue that nearly everyone, no matter the age, becomes distracted by items like phones, teenagers are just more prone to it.

The role of drivers education plays a partial role in the statistics of teen driving accidents, because requirements for getting a drivers license varies from state to state. Some places require the student to take eight courses of driver's education while others require only a certain number of hours. And for those that require courses to be taken, sometimes it is an option to take them online. Online school has been so beneficial to so many people, but on the topic of driver education, it is common for people to skip through it or be busy doing something else while watching the necessary videos and readings. So with that, when the information about driving casualties is brought up and the statistics of incidents of distracted driving or driving under the influence is brought up people do not fully process them. Then perhaps they randomly learn about it another time and are shocked at how high the statistics are, but they learned that in the drivers education courses, it just did not register in their minds. So ultimately, driver education is important and probably should be required everywhere in addition to hours of experience, but isn't necessarily the most major aspect of teen driver safety because teenagers must also retain the knowledge they are being taught.

In conclusion, teen driver safety is an important public issue because it affects not only the demographic of that age group, but also the whole community. Uneducated and inexperienced drivers of any age, but impressionable teenagers especially can risk the safety of those around them.