Skarie ACE Debate

I believe that raising the driving age is a very good decision because people who are older than 16 will most likely be better drivers. Raising the driving age would teach teenagers that driving is a huge responsibility. Also, some states allow unsupervised 14 year old's to drive which is a very bad idea because 14 year old's are inexperienced and can't drive well. There are people in Congress sponsoring bills which set a minimum unrestricted driving age as 18. Which means the driving age would be set to, at the least, 18 years old. This would give the teens more experience in driving before they got out on busy roads where more people can get hurt. Raising the driving age would help other people as well as the teens because if teens are better at driving, they put themselves and others at a lower risk of being injured or dying. As a rule, when you have more experience in driving, you are going to be better at it have a very low probability of being injured. There are people here and there that don't pay attention and that would result in them getting punished by the police and having to practice driving even more. Therefore, you can either be good at driving before hand and be safe, or start driving earlier, get in trouble, and have to go work on driving even more.

I believe that increasing the driving age would be a good idea because it would reduce the number of teenagers dying. According to the Center of Disease Control, they reported traffic accidents are the leading cause of death for American teenagers, a third of all deaths in that age group. Some people may say that raising the driving age wouldn't decrease the number of teenagers dying from accidents but, in 2011, about 2,650 teens in the United States aged 16–19 were killed and almost 292,000 were treated in emergency departments for injuries suffered in motor-vehicle crashes. That means that seven teens ages 16 to 19 died every day from motor vehicle injuries. Young people ages 15-24 represent only 14% of the U.S. population. However, they account for 30% ($19 billion) of the total costs of motor vehicle injuries among males and 28% ($7 billion) of the total costs of motor vehicle injuries among females. Therefore, it is true that if we raise the driving age, less teens will die.

I believe that the driving age should be raised because it would be safer to be older than 16 while driving. According to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety says 16 year old's have more accidents per highway mile than any other age group. The average teenager is very attached to their phone which could lead to texting or calling while driving. Lots of teenagers are also in a hurry which could mean that they end up running red lights and disobeying simple laws. Some people say that raising the driving age wouldn't be necessary because anybody can get distracted and disobey laws but, teenagers are more likely to do that because they aren't as used to driving and they are most teens are more about their phones than safety.