My parent’s insurance went up approximately a bajillion dollars when I got my permit and then my license. I did not really understand why though. I thought, how rude of our insurance company to just assume I am an awful driver because I am young. Then I looked around my high school parking lot one day, and suddenly everything made sense. The company assumed I was awful because they were extrapolating data from the majority. I would also want a bajillion dollars if I had to cover those people in the parking lot. Teen driver safety is an important public issue because it only takes one person, one mistake, or one second to get in an accident and hold a life in your hands. Drivers’ education gives many teen drivers the knowledge they need to be competent on the road, especially when the people around them are not. Just as it takes only one person to start an accident, it also only takes one person to prevent one. Currently, a large reason for car accidents is distracted driving, especially due to phones. As of late, teenagers are becoming more-and-more obsessed with the small piece of technology they store in their pockets, it does not matter that we tell you otherwise. Many teens are incapable of not answering their texts, Snapchats, or Instagram DMs at any point of time, including when they are actively driving. Simply glancing at your phone could turn into a catastrophe for you and everyone else on the road. We simply need more patience, there is no message important enough to risk lives, and if it truly is an emergency, it is always safer to pull to the side of the road, where you are not dangerous. While teenagers are heavily criticized for their driving habits, they are not the only ones at fault. Today, I went downtown to the County Courthouse to get new plates for my car, and as I am trying to straighten out to park on the curb, another car drives into my spot, leaving me with basically nowhere to move to. Teenagers need to have safe driving habits to carry into their adulthoods so that everyone on the road, ideally, has safe driving skills, limiting the number of accidents as a whole. However, teenagers also need safe driving skills so when the people around them are not acting safely, there is at least one driver in the situation that is paying attention to their surroundings. In order to promote safer driving, communities need to do it for all people, while teens are certainly a large part of the problem, they are not the entire issue. I have always been a strong believer that people act the way they have learned and been permitted to by their parents. When children climb on bookshelves at the library and are not redirected by their supervisors, they will continue to climb on bookshelves. This principle is the same for teenagers. In Wyoming, to qualify for a driver’s license, one is required to have fifty hours of supervised driving time (usually with a parent or guardian) and ten of those hours must be at night. In theory, this is great, required time driving with an adult so that you understand how to be safe on the road. However, I know of more people whose parents simply signed off on these hours than who actually drove. I get taking the easy way out, teenagers have school, jobs, volunteering, scholarships, homework, family, friends and more to balance, fifty hours of driving just seems like another thing to add on the list and sometimes it gets pushed to the bottom. In order to encourage safer driving among teenagers and young adults, there needs to be a better way to track these hours. A new system could ensure that teenagers are actually getting the time they need to understand how to be a safe driver. This new system could also limit the amount of lying being done and subsequently eliminating many unsafe drivers from the streets. Another way to encourage safer driving is to decrease the peer pressure that comes with driving. I have noticed that when one person in a friend group gets their license and a car, they want to show everyone they know. This results in people piling into a car that may-or-may-not have enough seats for all of them that is being driven by someone with a week-old license. Is this illegal? Yes. Do they care? No. If we limit the amount of pressure that comes with a car and the glamour that comes with acting as a chauffeur for your friends, there will likely be less people in a car at one time. This will not only create a safer atmosphere inside the vehicle but also one with less distractions for the driver. Teenagers are an issue within the driving community, there is no doubt about that, however, the system is also an issue. It is time to start looking at the whole problem instead of just using the sixteen-year-old scapegoats as we have been doing.