More often than not, driving is thought of as a right rather than a privilege. Especially among teenagers. Teen drivers are more dangerous and more likely to be involved in an accident, anyone can tell you that. If a teenager is such a dangerous driver, what can we do about it? More importantly, how do we make teenage drivers more aware? How do we change the way they see driving and decrease the amount of accidents teenagers are involved in and the cause of. Throughout this paper, I will be researching ways to answer this very difficult question.
How do we make teen drivers more aware? I know there will not be a direct answer, but hopefully there will be tips and other successful ways people have lowered the danger rate among teen drivers. Much of this paper will be research conducted and then formatted into an understanding and hopeful plan for the future. What I Knew One beautiful day my mother picked me up from school. She already had my younger sister, Jennah, with her. Jennah was in the back seat in her child safety seat. I sat down in the middle and my older sister, Kaylynne, sat on the other side of me.
My mother started to drive us the short distance to my father’s office. Kaylynne had an assembly that day on the importance of wearing your seatbelt. My mother had a bad habit of never putting hers on, but Kaylynne made her that day. My mother stopped at a stop sign and looked both ways before crossing an intersection. That’s when it happened. A large van ignored their stop sign and hit our car. The force of the impact cause our vehicle to roll three times before finally coming to a stop. I don’t remember the roll or the actual accident. The next thing | remember is an ambulance and a police car.
My mom was pulled from the car and so were my sisters. My sisters were given the option to ride in the back of the police car or to ride with my father. The picked to ride with my father. Unfortunately, I was not given the option. Thad cuts on the outside of my clothing, and due to my location in the car, the paramedics wanted to take me to the hospital with my mother. A nice man placed me in my younger sister’s safety seat and taped my head and body into place. Then I was taken to the ambulance where my mother was already loaded and given oxygen and some other medications.
I was placed somewhere in the ambulance where I was above my mother, and at a position where the only thing I could see was the frightening site of my mother covered in scratches and foreign tubes coming form her body. I don’t remember anything other than my mother promising it was okay. I will never forget this day. Since then I have always had a great respect and fear of driving. It is a dangerous task and many people take it for granted and put themselves and others in danger. Thankfully the day of our accident no one was permanently injured, but some days other people are not so lucky.
Tunderstand driving a car in a huge responsibility. I know that many people take that for granted, especially teenagers. There is a higher risk of death in new drivers until the age of 25. || know that teenagers are more easily distracted. I know that texting and driving is a really big danger. I know that people have died because they were distracted by their phone. I know that people have died because the other driver was a distra teenager. What I Want To Know I want to know why teenagers are so dangerous. I want to know what we can do to improve teenage driving.
I want to know how to make teenager aware that they are dangerous drivers and at a higher risk. By the end of this paper I hope to have a better understanding of teenage drivers. I myself am still a teenage driver and I want to know what makes me more dangerous than my mother, or my father. As a teenager, it is important for me to understand the dangers I face and create every time I get behind the wheel of a car. Literature Review Teen drivers have a per mile crash rate 3 times higher than drivers 20 and over (IIHS).
Teen drivers are inexperienced and have the ability to easily become unfocused. This problem is not located in one or two states, this is a problem all over the nation. Many states are working on way to make teenage drivers more aware and help make them safer drivers. “By 2006 over 40 states in the USA had adopted some version of Graduated Drivers License” (Best). The worst months for teen drivers is in July and August. Parents need to become more involved to make sure their teen driver is being safe and aware and not being easily distracted and making good choices.
There are many options out there for parents to observe how their teenager drives when they are away from home and away from their teen. Some people in California tried to use bumper stickers for other drivers to notice and call the toll free numbers to report how that individual was driving when they were out on the road. Often parents got to listen to compliments about their teen driver, and other times there were reports about speeding and passengers in the car drinking or doing drugs. This was helpful to those parents to be able to be more involved in their childs life.
However there was some difficulty with the teens covering or removing the bumper sticker when they left home so that other drivers had no idea that the parents wanted extra help keeping an eye on their teen driver. Ryan Howe worried that the numbers could be abused by other teenagers giving false reports about the individual and causing more problems than what the parents or the phone lines wanted to deal with. Other parents use black boxes in their teenagers car to track every single movement their teen makes in their car. How fast they driver, to how hard they break.
Everything is tracked and then can be plugged into a computer and reported to the parents to the teenager. This is also a good idea, but is it very cost effective for the parents? An even better thing is to use the insurance plug in for teenagers. What is helpful about that is that teenagers also have a discount on their insurance because using that device also tracks their driving. A negative thing about that is an individual does get marked down if they break too hard, even if it is to avoid a collision. It is better to be marked down for safe driving than to be careless and get yourself into an accident for being inattentive.
Your Search Conducting a search on an impossible question is a very difficult thing to do. The first task at hand was to figure out where to do a majority of the research. Using a search engine located on a reliable site, the search started. Many articles found were far from informative and helpful. In fact, many said the same thing over and over again. Teenagers are dangerous drivers. That didn’t help to answer the question on how to change that. After finding one article that was helpful, it was easier to locate another. Both of these articles had been peer reviewed and fit as reliable.
Conducting an interview was another important piece. Finding an individual who fit the standards of a reliable source and who would be helpful in the search for answers was difficult. After locating Sergeant Ryan Howe of the Twin Falls Police Department and scheduling an interview time, it was then to focus on what questions to ask to narrow down the search. Ten questions is what was started with, but a few more were added and a few more personal comments when the actual interview was conducted. Ryan Howe was very helpful and understanding of what I was trying to accomplish.
Many of his thoughts and opinions resembled the research I had already conducted and confirmed as helpful to answer my impossible question. Conclusions and Future Plans In conclusion, teenage drivers will always be dangerous. A teenage driver will always be inexperienced and inattentive. How we react and teach from there is the only thing we can change. To make a teenage driver more aware we must be diligent. Parents must become more involved in their teen drivers life and make a habit of showing their child or children the proper and safe way to operate an automobile.
We will ever be able to make a teen driver perfect, but we must always try and make them safe. Future Plans In the near future I want to raise awareness. I want to conduct an assembly that will help show the individuals in my high school that being a safe driver is a task they must promise to when they get their license and climb into their car everyday. I want to show them that it is more real than they think to die or kill someone in an automobile accident. Keeping the importance of being safe and making good choices in the back of their mind is what I strive for. In the far future, I plan to always be a cautious driver.
Someday when I have children of my own I know that things will be a little different due to technology advancements and the years between now and then, but I will be a very involved parent. I will not allow for them to be distracted by technology and carry themselves carelessly behind the wheel of a car. It is important for parents to understand the huge part they have to play in keeping their teenagers aware and as safe as possible. Someday as a parent I will practice good habits when I drive so that my children will be able to pick up and practice those habits themselves too.
