Should Driving Below the Age of 18 Be Legal?
Mrs. Martinez rushes into the ER looking around frantically for her teenage son Nick. Her eyes tear up as she remembers the phone call she received earlier. "Hello? Mrs. Martinez, this is Dr. Branson. Your son...he crashed his car and his condition is...critical." This is a phone call no parent ever wishes to receive. However, teenage driving is a serious issue facing the community nowadays, and many parents receive similar news on a daily basis. Moreover, many minors wind up injured or dead because of their failure to abide by legal rules that forbid them from driving at such a young age. According to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (2017), the leading cause of death for teenagers in
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The development of the frontal lobe is not completed before the age of 25. As a result, teenagers and young adults tend to undertake risky behavior more than adults. This inclination to take risks combined with being vulnerable to peer pressure leads to problems (Williams, 2015). In addition, the teenage brain is not equipped to properly handle the distractions that come with driving. According to the Association for Psychological Science (2013), “Since the teenage brain’s executive functions are still “under construction,” many teenage drivers are easily overwhelmed by nighttime conditions, friends in the car, multitasking, and so forth.” According to figure 1, the highest percentage of crashes caused by distractions occur as a result of the driver interacting with passengers in the car; second comes cellphone usage, and third is looking at something inside the vehicle. This further proofs that teenagers are easily distracted by multiple sources because of their under developed pre-frontal cortex. Therefore, teenagers should not be allowed to drive because they are hard-wired for poor attention spans and