Getting a driver’s license is a rite of passage for many American teenagers. The problem with this rite of passage is many of these same teen drivers get in an accident. Geico, an automobile insurance carrier, reported one in five first year drivers were involved in an accident. To decrease this number many laws have been passed. According to the Office of the Revisor of Statues, a government website that contains all laws passed in Minnesota, when a teenager first gets their license they start off with a provisional license that limits the hours in which they can drive and the number of passengers in the car. Some people have argued that having someone in the car can help the driver; I believe this is true if the passenger is an adult over
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In the essay “A Decrease in Brain Activation Associated with Driving When Listening to Someone Speak” from Brain Research by researchers Marcel Adam Just, Timothy Keller, and Jacquelyn Cynkar, they look into whether listening to someone speak has an effect on the driver’s ability. They discovered through their experiment that listening to someone while driving can decrease the proficiency of the driving. They say that “the sentence listening task reliably degraded driving performance, and in addition, it resulted in decreases in activation in key regions that underpin the driving task.” (Just, Keller, and Cynkar 72). This study demonstrates that the brain can only do one task at a time. For a driver, listening to someone puts driving on the back burner. The key thing that the driver should be working on is driving safely. The brain function that allows the brain to better multitask is not going to mature in a year. Therefore, we must increase the time a teenager has a passenger restriction limit in their car. Someone could argue that while the passenger is in the car they could be helping the driver see things that the driver may otherwise miss. I agree they could, but for a passenger under 20, this is very unlikely to be the case. A passenger under 20 has …show more content…
Minnesota has realized this danger and produced a law that they think will decrease the number of car crashes each year. A law that prohibits the number of passengers in a new driver’s car to one for the first six months and three passengers for the second six months (Office of the Revisor of Statues). This is not enough. I believe we should extend our one passenger rule from six months to one year and the three passenger rule until they turn 18. Some might say that this is not long enough as adolescence behavior does not stop the moment the teen turns 18. I believe that this is true, however legally they are an adult and we allow them to make other very important life decisions such as enlisting in the armed forces, marriage, and voting rights. I also believe that this extension of time is a relatively easy change to make in exchange for an increase in safety on our roads. The laws are already in place. All I am proposing is that we extend the time frame to be a little longer. This is not only for the safety for our teens on the road, but for the millions of Americans, young and old, who are on the roads every
In the essay “A Decrease in Brain Activation Associated with Driving When Listening to Someone Speak” from Brain Research by researchers Marcel Adam Just, Timothy Keller, and Jacquelyn Cynkar, they look into whether listening to someone speak has an effect on the driver’s ability. They discovered through their experiment that listening to someone while driving can decrease the proficiency of the driving. They say that “the sentence listening task reliably degraded driving performance, and in addition, it resulted in decreases in activation in key regions that underpin the driving task.” (Just, Keller, and Cynkar 72). This study demonstrates that the brain can only do one task at a time. For a driver, listening to someone puts driving on the back burner. The key thing that the driver should be working on is driving safely. The brain function that allows the brain to better multitask is not going to mature in a year. Therefore, we must increase the time a teenager has a passenger restriction limit in their car. Someone could argue that while the passenger is in the car they could be helping the driver see things that the driver may otherwise miss. I agree they could, but for a passenger under 20, this is very unlikely to be the case. A passenger under 20 has …show more content…
Minnesota has realized this danger and produced a law that they think will decrease the number of car crashes each year. A law that prohibits the number of passengers in a new driver’s car to one for the first six months and three passengers for the second six months (Office of the Revisor of Statues). This is not enough. I believe we should extend our one passenger rule from six months to one year and the three passenger rule until they turn 18. Some might say that this is not long enough as adolescence behavior does not stop the moment the teen turns 18. I believe that this is true, however legally they are an adult and we allow them to make other very important life decisions such as enlisting in the armed forces, marriage, and voting rights. I also believe that this extension of time is a relatively easy change to make in exchange for an increase in safety on our roads. The laws are already in place. All I am proposing is that we extend the time frame to be a little longer. This is not only for the safety for our teens on the road, but for the millions of Americans, young and old, who are on the roads every