Summary Of Driving To The Funeral By Anna Quindlen

Teens look forward to turning sixteen so they can drive. Driving is now considered normal for young, immature teens. Parents think of it as a blessing to them. If parents would look back to how they drove and acted when they first started driving it would be a different story. In the essay “driving to the funeral,” Anna Quindlen bluntly expresses why teens shouldn’t drive at a young age. Quindlen thinks that teens are too irresponsible to drive. She also states that parents consider their kids driving as relieving them of pointless driving. She proves the facts that sixteen-year-old have more accidents than eighteen-year old. Sixteen-year-old should have more and longer restrictions and parents should be willing to take their kids to places

The restrictions would make them more aware and understanding of what they can and can’t do if it is enforced longer. In Quindlen’s essay, she says the young teens didn’t witness any drunk driving; “nearly all, however, said they had witnessed speeding, which is the leading factor in fatal crashes by teenagers today” (Quindlen 503). Speeding is something everyone does, but it is taken too far by teens. Teens try to show off for their friends and think they can control the car. Then it gets way out of their control and they crash. Teens are pressured by their peers,” since the greatest danger to a teenage driver is another teenager in the car- the chance of having an accident double with two teenage passengers and skyrockets with three or more- some new rules forbid novice drivers from transporting their peers” (Quindlen 504). Some teens have had more experience driving and show their friends, some tricks they have learned then their friends try it and wreck. Teenagers are so influenced by others to the point it causes their deaths. So, if teens have more restrictions it would help prevent

Their kids should be their number one priority to keep safe, “yet parents seem to treat the right of a 16-year-old to drive as an inalienable one, something to be neither questioned nor abridged” (Quindlen 503). For a sixteen-year-old to drive is considered mandatory so parents don’t have to take them or their siblings to school or practice. When an older sibling gets their license, the parents don’t have to be as much of a parent as they should. Parents are so lazy now, “in a nation that developed mass-transit amnesia and traded the exurb for the small town, a licensed son or daughter relieves parents of a relentless roundelay of driving” (Quindlen 503). Parents look forward to being able to tell their kids to go pick up some food so they don’t have to get out. Younger siblings get so used to calling their parents to come and pick them up only to get told to call their brother or sister to come and get them. It becomes a habit to call their siblings instead. Parents should take responsibility for their children and want to keep them safer as long as they