The Chris Struttmann Report

This is actually a report I did for ENC 1101, leave a comment, tell me how you think it should be graded.            

            For years and years accepted minimum driving age was sixteen years; teens have begun to accept this privilege as a right and in that same process they’ve lost their responsible driver status. The following report will examine the causes and effects of a low driving age in today’s world, examine some of the results in some states already taken action, look at the economic impacts and finally discuss the parent’s perspective.
             In 2007, AAA issued a report with some absolutely alarming statistics regarding drivers of the fifteen to twenty age group. The very first statistic is says that sixteen year-olds have a 300% higher chance of dying in a car crash. The report continues to say that in 2006, drivers between the age of fifteen and twenty accounted for approximately thirteen percent of drivers in fatal crashes. A similar report conducted by the National Highway Traffic Safety in 2005 shows that thirty-eight percent of teen drivers were speeding at the time of the accident. Furthermore, twenty-four percent of teen drivers had been drinking at the time of accident and sixty-six percent of teen drivers were not wearing seatbelts.
             A proposal to raise the minimum driving age to eighteen would greatly reduce all of the above statistics. Some states have already begun to raise the driving age to 17: New York, New Jersey and Ohio are among those states; since the bill has passed in those states, they’ve been able to enjoy far fewer accidents and fatalities, according to the NHTSA, thirty percent fewer.
             If teen drivers were to account for twenty-seven percent of drivers on the road today: creating this rule would greatly reduce traffic on local roads. The average driver might not think about this is much but next time you’re stuck in traffic look at how many cars you can see, and then say that for every 10 cars, roughly 3 of them can disappear. In that same traffic jam you might the cheapest gas station in town, they’re advertising a gallon of regular, eighty-seven octane gas for three dollars and fifty cents per gallon. If twenty-seven percent of drivers left the roads tomorrow, demand would fall, simple math and common sense would allow you to arrive at the conclusion that supply would go up; when supply goes up, prices go down. Well that same three dollar and fifty cent gallon of gas would become a, roughly, two dollar and fifty-five cent gallon of gas. At twenty thousand miles per year at twenty miles per gallon, that’s an annual savings of nine hundred and forty-five hundred dollars per year.
 An opponent of raising the driving age might state that by raising the driving age, you’re not preventing deaths, but simply delaying them. Such statement is blatantly incorrect, referring to the NHTSA report used above to list states that have already begun raising the driving age, it’s found that these states still have a learner’s-permit like system implemented; such systems allow younger drivers to gain experience while still under a parents control.
 In 2006, the state of Maryland adopted a law that didn’t allow teen driver’s to have any passengers in the vehicle while they were driving. The state cited a study that indicated that your risk of being in an accident as a sixteen year old driver doubles when you have one or more passengers in the car with you. Hillary Heubeck, a sixteen year-old driver told the Washington Post “Not everybody is stupid,” and continues her statement saying that she doesn’t feel that everyone should be punished because some teens are “young and stupid.” The sad reality is, remarks like “not everybody is stupid” demonstrates the exact kind of arrogance that get teens killed in the very first place; this point is validated with research from USA Today showing that the portion of the brain that is responsible for weighing risks versus what controls are at hand isn’t fully developed until the age of twenty five and furthermore, doesn’t begin developing until you’re seventeen.
             That same USA Today report brings to light another very interesting point: with our current rules and regulations, all of the above statistics are only bound to get worse. When printed in 2005, the article states that a less than even amount of baby-boomer’s kids are old enough to be getting on the road; in the next five to seven years we could see an influx of teen drivers to the amount of 17.5 million over the next 5 years; the time to change these laws is now, not after all of these new drivers are given their first piece of plastic to keep in their wallets.
             Another concern is the economic impact: if all these teenagers aren’t being allowed to drive, what’s going to happen to the car market? There is no research on how many cars are bought each year due to new drivers being put on the road. However, a logical approach can be used to answer this question: if a law were to be passed that drivers had to wait until the age of eight-teen to get their license, that’d mean that all of those potential drivers would need to wait two years before getting a car. After those two years the car market, if it were to suffer a loss at all, would be back to normal as all of the same drivers would be looking for cars.
             The used car market isn’t the only economic factor that would, potentially, be changed by the rise of the driving age: all of these crashes and deaths ring up medical bills that insurance companies and the U.S. Government are forced to pay. A brand new 2008 Report issued by AAA calculates the total on that bill to be over thirty four billion dollars; to put that into perspective, that’s over fifty percent more than what the United States Government is prepared to front to bail out America’s automotive industry. Most of that money will come from the American tax-payer.

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            The final issue being addressed is the parent’s perspective. Almost all of the cited material in this report quotes a parent who does not want to have to act as a “taxi” service of sorts. There is absolutely no research on this; it’s something that has to be dealt with almost exclusively on a case-by-case basis. It can, however, be said that America’s schools have an established bus system to transport our students to and from school and if such law were to take affect, America would need to take some time to create a better public transportation system. It’s possible that Congress could use a small piece of that annual thirty four billion dollars to shape up our public transportation system. Turning to Europe for an answer is one way to look at this: an article from cut-the-knot.org has acquired and translated information from a German driving school. In Germany, you must be over eighteen to get your license, you must have completed two years of a probation license (similar to our learner’s permits), if you have had any violations during the probation period you must start the probation period over, and finally twenty eight hours of in-class driver draining and thirty-five hours of on-road driving school. There is no solid English statistics on deaths caused by teen driving in Germany, but there is a statistic that shows in 1998, there were 7,792 deaths on German roads (safecarguide.com); that figure is for the entire German population, not just teens and it’s just above the amount of road deaths in this country solely among teenagers.
             The simple facts are: the amount of teen deaths while behind the wheel of a car in America is simply alarming. We’re behind the rest of the world in this movement to change the driving age and we need to do something fast before we have even more under-developed, inexperienced drivers on the road. This topic can be debated for hours on end but at the end of the day, you must look at the big picture. Is it going to be an inconvenience for some? Absolutely. I’m not going to write this with the notion that this wouldn’t require some drastic change among Americans, but after all, isn’t that what the President-elect is touting? Change? Why can’t safer roads with more responsible drivers be one of those changes? Along with the infinite list of side effects such as the forcing of public transportation to improve, zero 15-18 teen drunk driving, lower demand on gasoline and less traffic. Let’s not forget about the millions of lives.