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Author: Debate_Guru

The Driving Age Should be Lowered to 16

CON (3 arguments)

Links to more CON research:

Raise the Driving Age to 18

Both sides can use this article to prepare. Teenagers weigh in on the driving age debate.

 

Officials Hope to Curb Accidents by Raising Driving Age

This brief article explains how South Carolina is dealing with teen driving fatalities.

 

Is 16 too Young to Drive a Car?

USA Today explains why 16 year olds have a high driving fatality rate.

1. By allowing only responsibly 18-years olds to drive, the U.S. economy will improve slightly.
Warrant:

By only allowing 18-year olds and the road and having 300,000 less crashes (Assertion #1), we won’t have to spend so much money repairing these cars and providing for these people medically every year.
Impact:

According to a U.S. Department of Transportation report done in 2004, America spend $1.9 trillion dollars annually on health care. By cutting out 300,000 incidents, you could save up to $600 million, according to LA Times. The $600 million could be put to use, in education and in providing jobs for millions of people instead of being wasted on irresponsible17-year olds who got in car crashes.
2. More people want driving age at 18 than at 17- including 15-year olds.
Warrant:

A poll taken showed that more people believed that 17 was too young an age to drive than didn’t.
Sources:

A joint poll taken by USA Today, CNN, and Gallup found that 61% of the people interviewed believed that 16 was too young an age to be allowed to drive. Only 37% of the same poll believed that it was OK to allow 16-years olds to drive.
3. People under the age of 18 are too young and immature to drive, and when they drive, they get into fatal accidents most of the time.
Warrant:

Since they are younger and their brains have not developed as much as that of an 18-year old, children under the age of 18 have a huge disadvantage when it comes to driving an automobile. This leads to more crashes, as cars are really 5,000 pound instruments of death for both the driver and the person crashed into.

 

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration indicates approximately 300,000 motor vehicle crashes resulting in injuries for this age group per year. 37,261 dead in those crashes, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation

Scientists at the NIH campus in Bethesda, Md., have found that this vital area develops through the teenage years and isn't fully mature until age 25. However, according to the same study, an 18-year olds brain is 15% more advanced than a 16-year olds brain.

Most fatal crashes with 16-year-old drivers (77%) involved driver errors, especially the kind most common among novices, according to USA Today.
Sources:

USA Today