Introduction: Many teenagers get their permits and licenses between the ages of 16-18. However, those teenagers who get their permit or get their license don’t fully understand the risks of driving. In 2010, there was an estimated amount of 5,419,000 car accidents. Many accidents involved a driver influenced by alcohol and/or narcotics. Some accidents occurred do to people not paying attention to the road and others were because of bad weather or they lost control over the motorized vehicle. Accidents can happen at any given time. You could be one of the best drivers there are and still get in to a car accident due to other reckless drivers. So here are some helpful tips on how to avoid getting into car accidents that injure yourself and Paying attention to the speed limit reduces the chances of getting a fine for going over or under the speed limit. Speeding fines run anywhere from 45$ to 150$. Some teens don’t have jobs to pay fines and most parents won’t pay their child’s fine. So the only other option is to do community service if that option is available. No teen wants to do community service. While driving at night it is imperative that teenagers and adults be more cautious. At night on back roads deer are more active and jump out to run across roads more frequently. Although experienced drivers are used to driving at both day and night accidents can still happen no matter how experienced the driver is. During the winter if there is ice on the road it is harder to see at night, which can cause the driver to lose control of the vehicle. With practice and time driving at night will become much easier and you will become more comfortable with it. Wearing your seat belt is also very important. Many lives are saved on a daily basis because of the invention of seat belts. Yes seat belts are uncomfortable but they make seat belt covers to make them more comfortable and so they won’t rub on your neck. Seat belts are safety precautions and a law that when you are in a car you must wear your seat
Drunk driving accidents are the number one killer of adolescents (Teenagers and peer pressures. (n.d.). Retrieved November 1, 2013, from). Mixing drinking while driving can be deadly. Teenage drunk driving accidents not only affect the person drinking while driving, but it also can kill or harm others (Alcohol problems and solutions. (n.d.). Retrieved November 1, 2013, from) (Teen drinking and driving. (n.d.). Retrieved November 1, 2013, from) . Every single accident provoked by drinking and driving could have been prevented. If underage drinking is illegal, why do young people do it ? Teenagers usually are influenced by their elders (Alcohol problems and solutions. (n.d.). Retrieved November 1, 2013, from). In the United States, one out of ten 12 through 14 year olds have tried alcohol and continue to do so on a regular basis . There is a more than fifty percent of probability that young adults that have tried alcohol at a younger age may become alcoholics in the near future (Alcohol fatalities. (n.d.). Retrieved November 1, 2013, from). So, why do teenagers take so many risks with their health and behind the wheel? The answer is simple teen drivers tend to think they are invincible and more needs to be done to educate teens on the dangers of drinking and driving.
On top of that there are also some hefty fines that will help a driver learn his or her lesson. The average speeding ticket in the US is 150 dollars, but the faster a person drives the more costly a speeding ticket becomes. Drivers have the choice to fight their citation in court instead of just paying the fine, a lot of speeding drivers often do. If the driver decides to do this, the officer then assigns them a traffic court date. Drivers who take their fine to court normally do so because they disagree with the reason they were pulled over or believe they have a justifiable explanation for speeding. There is not good reason for speeding hence the saying “better late than never”. A driver who goes to court usually ends up paying the fine they received in the first place along with court fees. Not to mention the effects a speeding ticket has on one’s insurance. Just one speeding ticket can skyrocket an average policy holder’s premium as much as 22 percent according to an analysis of over 490,000 policy quotes. There are a lot of things that money could be spent on than a speeding ticket. Most states also employ a points system and when an individual acquires a certain amount of points (ten points in most states) the state will suspend an individual’s license. Now the driver can take a Defensive Driving course to deduct 2 points from their record, this can be done once every 24
Just like the teenage boy that died in the wreck, most young teen drivers think they are invincible and are owners of the road which is all due to lack of maturity. The mind set of young drivers now days is “I’m too young to die”, or “it wont happen to me” and they are so blinded by the immature thinking that it gets them in trouble. Some traits generally linked with the immaturity are: chance taking, testing limits, poor-decision making, overconfidence, speeding, following to closely, and dangerous passing (Williams). When you have youthful age and immature characteristics combined the crash possibility is enlarged. The 15-16 age groups are among the most accident prone of most groups (“Don’t”), so why then would we want them behind the wheel? “Most U.S. states license at age 16, but the minimum age for a regular license is 14 in South Dakota and 15 in five other states including: Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, New Mexico, and South Carolina”, stated Allan F. Williams. Youthful age and immature thinking is part of the reason wh...
According to national teen driving statistics, 16-year-olds, in particular, are 3 (three) times more likely to die in a crash than the average of all drivers, and they have higher crash rates than any other age group. In 2008; 81% of teenage crash deaths were passenger vehicle occupants, 31% of teenage drivers killed had been drinking alcohol, 55% were not buckled up, and 37% of male teenage drivers involved in fatalities were speeding. Teenagers who drink and drive have a greater risk of serious crashes than older drivers with equal blood alcohol concentrations. Teens do not wear seat/safety belts as much as adults. Teens tend to take more risks due to overconfidence in their abilities. These risks include: speeding, tailgating (driving too close to the vehicle in front), running red lights, violating traffic signals and signs, illegal turns, dangerous passing, and failure to yield to pedestrians.
Teens need to be taught that driving is a task that is complex and demanding. Parents know how much experience a young driver has, and they know exactly how inconvenient it is when they have to drive with their teen everywhere while they have their permit. Teens tend to cause most traffic accidents in adults’ eyes. They are not experienced yet, and often fail to pay attention to others on the road. They often think of a car as being some type of toy, but they do not know how powerful it really is. The driver education programs must be strengthened in order to make sure that students really have safer habits, behind the wheel experience, and by having a better understanding of all the laws on the road.
...ture a risk-taking species. In ancient times we took risks just to eat. Later we took huge risks by setting out in little wooden ships to explore the earth's surface. We continued as we sought to fly, travel faster than the speed of sound and to head off into space. We rely on increasingly more complex equipment and constantly strive to design and manufacture faster and even more elaborate devices. It goes without saying that every effort is made to ensure our "safety"; to keep us from harm or danger. Every time you slide behind the wheel of your vehicle you are taking a risk. Driving is the riskiest activity in our lives. It is an inherently "unsafe" environment. The most perfect vehicles on the best designed highways on beautiful sunny days driven by fallible human beings crash into each other. The only way to drive "safely" (as we are all admonished to do!) is to learn more about the process. Learn more about your vehicle and how to maintain it; learn how to use your eyes to look far down the road; learn to spot problems before they happen; and also learn to deal with emergency situations. In most cases it's the human element that fails. After all, safe is only as safe does.
The biggest problem with drunk driving by young adults is the high rate of traffic accidents. Although young drivers ages 16 through 25 makeup only 15% of U.S. licensed drivers, they constitute 30 percent of all alcohol-related driving fatalities. This is double the amount of licensed drivers in that age group. Inexperience with both drinking and driving may contribute to this disproportionate rate. Nationwide in 1996, people ages 15 to 24 died in fatal motor vehicle crashes and 45 percent of those deaths were a result of alcohol (NHTSA 4). So it comes to no surprise that traffic crashes are the leading cause of death in the United States for people younger than 25 (NCHS 98).
Driving is always a hazard, no matter what time of year or day it is. There are some people who don’t use turn signals, people who run red lights, some people disobey the “pedestrians first” law, and there are many other reasons as to why driving can be dangerous. The important thing is for you to remember the laws and violations set when driving, and to take precaution during changing seasons and holidays; as well as everyday
Teens only make up seventeen percent of the population today, but almost twenty percent of fatal crashes are due to teenagers behind the wheel. Growing numbers suggest changing the driving age to eighteen and some even believe that changing it to twenty-one may save even more lives. With a sixteen year old behind the wheel, accidents are even more likely to occur when compared to a seventeen year old (Boulard). With so much new technology in today’s society there are more distractions on the road than ever before; therefore the legal driving age should be raised to save more lives. If we do not act quickly, then more lives will be lost.
Richard Petty once said “You’ll got home safe, so drive safe, and stay safe.” Being a racing legend, he is an advocate for safe driving to minimise the cases of road crushes that have been on the rise. He double up as the chairman of the Veterans’ Safe Driving Initiative, the initiative is aimed at guiding the veterans returning from deployment on safe driving tips. It is necessarily important since the infrastructure has changed over time. Another initiative is being run in Minnesota where the teens are guided on the important safe driving tips. Study shows that more crushes are likely to occur in teen driving than veteran driving. It is also evident that young drivers are more likely to cause a crush within six months of passing the driving test and young male are worse than the females in the field.
Seatbelts have been around since the 1950s and have proven to save lives over the years. The teenage stigma is that they do not need to wear one because they will be fine. After thousands of accidents where the occupants did not wear their seatbelt, the Supreme Court decided to pass some laws. “In 1972, the agency requires dull passive restraints for front seat occupants” (Supreme Court). The agency that the Supreme Court is referring to is the Department of Transportation. This law is a staple in automobile safety and sets a level of precedents for future laws. After this law was passed, the amount of fatalities from traffic incident relating to seat belts usage had dropped. The Supreme Court did not stop there, they continued to add more laws. “...new motor vehicles produced after September 1982 will be equipped with passive restraints to protect the safety of the occupants of the vehicle in the event of a collision” (Supreme Court). Now all new motor vehicles must have a form of passive restraint added to their vehicles before they can sell them to the public. The government hoped to protect more lives of young drivers who did not insist on wearing seat belts by making them mandatory and being enforced by police officers. Since 1972, hundreds of thousands of teenage lives have been saved with this simple safety
We as a city, need to enforce speeding more, and make changes to slow people down, on roads. Solutions to overcome speeding are key. There have been speeding campaigns in the past, that had been successful. The speed readers on our roads cause people to slow down effectively. We need to have more speed readers on our city’s roads, to encourage people to slow down.
Seatbelt is a very important component when we all drive a car or other vehicle. The main purpose of seat belts is to provide greater safety to the driver when driving car but at the moment, people do not care about the importance of wearing seatbelt.
When you are not able to control the vehicle or make rational decisions can happen you are much more likely to get into a car accident. Accidents the normally involve other people. Car accidents can be often fatal or life changing. These accidents can involve other people and not just you. One such story is about a couple who just recently got engaged to each other. On their wedding day they were driving down the highway and they we getting on the on ramp and a drunk driver was entering on the exit ramp. The two cars collided head on and seriously injured the woman. The mad was killed in the crash. The drunk driver left the scene. Another story was about a kid and his friends. They were driving they stopped at a stop sign and from behind them was a drunk driver speeding and the driver did not stop and rear-ended them causing the jeep to flip over and kill the kid. HIs friends were able to make it. The drunk driver went home and went to bed without even realising what he
The main distraction of driving is cell phones. Most adults and teens will engage in texting and driving. Due to the major issue of texting and driving many campaigns have been launched, one being launched by AT&T “when it comes to texting and driving, it can wait.” This campaign has many drivers take the pledge to no longer use their phone when driving, there is an available app that will send out automatic messages to anybody that sends a while the individual is driving. When someone is driving at the rate of 55 miles per hour for only 4.6 seconds, it will equal the length of a football field, 100 yards. So, even stopping full vision from the road for a few seconds will still risk serious danger. Another cause of distracted driving is being exhausted or tired, doing so will cause a much slower reaction time. The slower reaction time causes many of the accidents that happen when people are tired. Another possibility is falling asleep behind the wheel even for a few seconds you could drift, or swerv into another lane and hit another car causing a major or fatal car accident. When taking driving classes, the students within the class will hear the saying “stay alert, stay alive.” The final major distraction of driving is eating and drinking. One of the problems of eating and drinking while driving is that it causes both a visual and manual distraction. When removing your eyes from the road many dangers will be