The human brain is not fully developed until one is a young to middle aged adult, so it seems absurd to me that we should entrust the control of huge, heavy, and potentially deadly machines to teenagers who are prone to making irrational and unpredictable decisions. I myself did not earn my license until I was nearly seventeen, but plenty of my friends jumped at the chance to get theirs immediately upon their sixteenth birthday. Of course, being able to transport oneself to school and activities alone lends a certain degree of independence that is very valuable in preparing young people for leaving the home. I believe that there are both strong pros and strong cons to teen driving. 
Of course, no one can begin driving without being taught how. Many teens today are not able to access professional driving classes. Even though some schools are starting to offer driver’s ed programs, it can still be incredibly hard to enroll in one. The waiting list is often very long, with no new spots available until months out. The cost can also deter some families from signing up their children for these programs. Classroom training can be anywhere from $30 to $180, while behind-the-wheel training can cost $50 to $150 per session. Because of a combination of limited availability and an ever-strangling economy, many students are relegated to learning driving from their parents, who may not be as qualified as a professional driving instructor. Teens may develop bad driving habits that their parents pass on to them, or they may originate their own faults that parents fail to correct. There is an extremely high annual death rate for teen drivers, due to inexperience and irrationality—thousands of teens dying in accidents each year. Driver’s education aims to better teach these young people the ins and outs of driving, in the attempt to lower this horrific casualty rate. 
However, incomplete training is only one of the problems that teen drivers face in today’s world. One of the biggest threats to the safety of a driver is their phone. It is becoming ever more apparent these days that phones cause just as many problems as they solve. One of these problems is distraction.  Phones contain information from A to Z, from conversations to videos and everything in between. This cascade of data at our fingertips constantly tempts us to pick it up and look at it. Gen Z and Gen Alpha, having grown up with phones ever at their sides, are the people most likely to be distracted by their devices when driving. “What’s the problem?” you might ask. “After all, checking your texts while you’re stopped at a light can’t do much harm.” But pretty soon, looking at your phone while at a stoplight leads to looking at your phone on the road. Just for a few seconds at a time, perhaps, but a few seconds of distraction might be all that is needed to get into a fatal accident. 
However; it is unreasonable for teen drivers to leave their phones behind when they go places. They must be able to contact the authorities and their parents in case of an emergency. So how can they overcome the temptations of these seemingly necessary distractions? I would suggest setting the phone to Do Not Disturb and putting it in the glovebox or another storage area of the car. Even just face down on the dash, it lessens the inclination to pick it up and look at it. Many teens also use their phones to listen to music while they are driving, and this, too, can provide an opportunity for distraction. Music should always be kept to a relatively quiet volume so that it is easy to ignore when in tense situations.  
Distractions cause an absent or confused mind, and this can be fatal. An acquaintance of mine shared a story in which she almost got into an accident. She was driving to her math class when a dog ran out into the road in front of her car. She had a split second to decide what to do next: she could either hit the dog or pull to a quick stop. Normally in a situation like this, the correct decision would be to stop and not hit the dog. The problem here was that there was a car directly behind her, liable to rear end her if she pulled up too quickly. So she decided to hit the dog. After all, her life, her mother’s life, and the life of the person in the car behind her were more important than the life of the dog. But at the last moment, her mother screamed at her to stop the car. Instinctively, she obeyed. She missed the dog, only hitting its tail. The car behind her managed to stop as well, but they were within mere inches of her. In this instance, her mother had posed a distraction, and she had listened to it.  
I believe that we as a people can effectively combat this epidemic of dangerous driving. I would suggest that we open more driving schools across the country so as to present more opportunities for new drivers to be educated by practiced professionals. Many states in America require their schools to provide a driver’s education course; this should be changed to all states. We must also make the students themselves aware of the responsibility they are taking on when they receive a driver's licenses. All the training in the world will do nothing to prevent a catastrophe if the driver is not taking the situation seriously. That is the most important thing. Driving is less of a privilege than a weighty responsibility, and many people today forget this. I believe that if we were to remember more often that we literally hold the lives of others in our hands while on the road, we would be much more careful.