According
to the CDC, the leading cause of death for individuals twelve to
nineteen years of age is car accidents. These car accidents account
for one third of all teenage deaths. That is a lot, and I can almost
guarantee it is because the driver is doing something they should not
be doing. To prevent a majority of these deaths, the kids need to be
properly taught driver safety and education, so that they know what
they should be doing to be as safe as possible. The steps that can be
taken to reduce these deaths are heavier fines and punishments for
getting caught driving irresponsibly. If people know that the
punishment is worse than the actual offense, it will deter people
from driving recklessly and endangering everyone else.

Another
way to prevent car accident deaths is to have a more difficult
driver’s test. By having a more difficult driver’s test, you
would be preventing individuals from getting their license when they
are not ready really to drive, thereby keeping the roads safer for
everyone. I have been in cars with my peers who speed all the time.
They have nice cars that go fast. They weave through traffic, go ten,
sometimes fifteen miles over the speed limit, all to get to their
destination faster. However, they know when it is safe and when it is
not. They have enough common sense to know that if there are a lot of
cars on the road, you cannot speed and go around cars because it is
dangerous. Yet, not everyone understands that. I have seen peers
drive recklessly, even when it is not safe = speeding in the rain,
playing around with the wheel, texting and driving, turning around to
talk to the passengers in the back. These behaviors are a huge issue,
but the biggest way to change those behaviors is maturity.

Teens
are young and dumb. We take risks that we should not, we do things we
should not, but only because we have not yet experienced the
consequences of our actions or others’. In light of this, I will
do my part to try and fix this problem by practicing my own safe
driving habits and by correcting others’ habits when I encounter
them. By doing this, hopefully, people will begin to change their
habits for the better and do the same for others, so that the leading
cause of death for individuals twelve to nineteen is not car
accidents.