Lowering Driving Age
According to the Healthresearchfunding.org site, there are fewer drunk driving traffic accidents and fatalities in many countries with a minimum drinking age of 18. This is a statistic which is supporting lowering the drinking age. This is showing how there is a drop in numbers of people who are involved in drunk driving accidents because their drinking age is 18. When you lower the drinking age, it makes the urge and temptation of alcohol not as high. When they are able to start drinking at a younger age, they are able to learn how to maintain a healthy balance of the substance. Also, when something is so readily available to them there is not as high as a craving for it. Lowering the drinking age while raising the driving age also gives
…show more content…
people time to learn how to control their drinking habits before they start driving. This would eventually decrease the number of drunk drivers among adults as well. According to the Zero Tolerance Law, for drivers under 21, the United States has a No Tolerance Policy that does not allow any alcohol to be in the blood system while behind the wheel. Statistics show that there are car crashes every 51 minutes due to someone driving under the influence. Today, there is an alarming rate of DUI’s in teens, which tends to be growing over the past several years. The legal age of drinking should be lowered while the age of driving should be raised, that way teens learn to control their usage of alcohol before they are able to start driving. This would also help to decrease the amount of DUI’s in adults as well. This topic is about why the drinking age should be lowered while the driving age should be raised. The importance of this is to show that there would be a decrease in the number of driving under the influence accidents not only in teens, but also in adults as well. If the drinking were to be lowered binge drinking in young adults would also have a great decrease because when things are legal, people have less of a want to do them. It is understandable why people disagree with this solution, but they are wrong and for many reasons. Lowering the drinking age would be a beneficial improvement in our Society. The reason for this is that when you have a younger number of adults that have the legal ability to drink at a younger age, they do not have the urge to do it as much. This will eventually result in less consumption of alcohol in adults as well. If we do not come up with a solution for this problem, it will become an ongoing cycle. Also, if a person is old enough to serve and die for their country shouldn’t he or she be old enough to consume or purchase alcohol. According to a professor at Indiana University’s article, “ 22% of all students under 21 compared to 18% over 21 years of age are heavy drinkers.” Also, as drinking age pro and cons article states “there are 10.1 million underage drinkers in the United States.” and in addition “each year, approximately 5,000 people under the age of 21 die from causes related to underage drinking. These deaths include about 1,600homicides and 300 suicides.” These statistics are the perfect example of how the legal drinking age at the moment is not functioning as well as it should and why we should lower the legal age to a younger age. Research from Teenhelp.com shows that about five percent of teens are suffering with major depression at any one time. Some may argue that with this rate of teen depression, it would be imbecilic to give the availability of alcohol to a depressed teen where they could make a rash decision that will end their life. It is understandable why they would think this is the case, but in most cases, if the teen is already depressed, they will take their own life with or without alcohol in their system. Under age drinking is also one of the causes of many car accidents and injuries. This ties into the suggestion of lowering the drinking age. It is commonly thought that raising the driving age along with lowering the drinking age would be a helpful solution to many problems we are having in our country right now.
According to the Health Research Funding’s article, “drinking at a younger age makes individuals seven times more likely to be the offender of an alcohol-related vehicle crash.”, and also “out of all of the alcohol-related crashes that kill teenagers, approximately ¼ of the fatalities are underage drinkers”. This being said, our country obviously has a serious problem with underage drinkers relating with car accidents. When teenagers drink underage they are known to make impulsive decisions, but adding a license to the mix is asking for trouble. A simple fix for this is to raise the driving age to 19 and make it harder to get a license. The license process should entail of a series of questions along with a high cost to attain the license as well. “Almost one in four drivers believes the driving age should increase to 18 and statistics show that young motorists have poorer driving records than older drivers” as reported by Auto Express’ article about automobile driving. Germany is an example of a country that is using this method. Their legal age to drink is sixteen where as their legal driving age is eighteen and it’s made extremely difficult to obtain a license. Information from one.nhtsa’s article proves that Germany’s alcohol involved car fatalities percentage is much lower than the United State’s percentage. It shows that Germany has a 17% alcohol related car fatality rate, whereas the United States has a 38.6% alcohol related car fatality rate. Another statistic from Choose Responsibility’s article states that “ a recent NHTSA study that compared DUI laws in the United States to those in comparable nations, such as the European Union States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and Brazil, found that the United States had the highest proportion of traffic fatalities that were
alcohol-related among the twelve countries reporting data.” The legal drinking age of most all countries in the report was 18. The article also shows the statistic that in southern European nations ratios of all drinking occasion to intoxication occasions were one in ten, while in the United States, almost half of all drinking occasions resulted in intoxication. Not only would raising the legal driving age be solution to underage alcohol-related car accidents, but it would also be a valuable change for our economy. The reason it would be a valuable change for our economy is because it would decrease the amount of people driving, which in return decreases the amount of pollution in the air. It is also a possibility that the price of gas would decrease too as a result of not as many people needing it, also known as supply and demand. Another factor that plays along with underage drinking is an object called a fake identification, or most commonly known as a fake ID. Fake IDs can be easily obtained for a certain cost. Fake IDs are also usually used to obtain alcohol when an individual has not met the legal age requirement to buy it yet. A person can also get possible jail time for being caught with a fake ID. An article written by Livescience about underage drinking in accordance to fake Identification states “Underage college students who use fake IDs to get alcoholic drinks end up drinking more frequently, which may put them at higher risk for developing alcohol-use disorders later in life, researchers say. In a study of about 1,000 college students at a U.S. university, the researchers found that almost two-thirds of the study participants had used false IDs to buy alcohol at least once during college. On average, students used fake IDs about 25 percent of the time they drank alcohol before they turned 21, the legal drinking age in the United States. (Other times, the students obtained alcoholic drinks through legal-age friend or family members.) The more frequently the students used fake IDs, the more often they drank, according to the study, published in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research.” This article exemplifies how fake IDs contribute to the underage drinking dilemma. Another complication of underage drinking is binge drinkers. Underage drinkers can get alcohol through older friends who are able to buy the alcohol. This makes alcohol like a “forbidden fruit” to them, and they will get overly drunk because they do not know the next time they will be able to drink alcohol. This overly intoxication can result in death. According to MADD’s article about statistics on alcohol abuse “ underage teen alcohol abuse kills 4,700 people each year, which is more than all illegal drugs combined”. Also an article by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism wrote “People ages 12 through 20 drink 11 percent of all alcohol consumed in the United States. Although youth drink less often than adults do, when they do drink, they drink more. That is because young people consume more than 90 percent of their alcohol by binge drinking. Binge drinking is consuming many drinks on an occasion. Drinking alcohol and binge drinking become more prevalent as young people get older. 5.1 million young people reported binge drinking at least once in the past month, and 1.3 million young people reported binge drinking on 5 or more days over the past month”. These are great statistics that are proof that binge drinking is a terrible problem in relation to underage drinkers. The solution is simple, lower the drinking age so that the teens do not have the craving to binge drink. People may argue that the younger a person starts to drink, the more likely they will have alcohol dependence, but when you make something easily available to a teen there is less of a rebellious urge to use it. Information from the Does the World Have a Drinking Problem says “Americans aged 15 and up drink only three-quarters as much alcohol as Europeans, but are far more likely to be involved in fatal alcohol-related accidents or die from other alcohol-related causes. There’s no single reason Americans are less responsible with alcohol, but some speculate that a higher legal drinking age in the U.S. leads to more destructive underage drinking habits. Another explanation: Far more Europeans take public transportation home from the bar.” This article also concludes from a WHO survey in 2008 that there was seventy-one percent increase in drinking from teenagers thirteen to fifteen years old. This is a perfect example of how the legal age for driving and the legal age for drinking in the United States has a terrible relationship towards each other. Our legal age to drive being sixteen and our legal age to drink being twenty-one, whereas in Germany, for example, has a legal age to drive at eighteen with a much harder and expensive process to obtain their license and a legal age to drink at 16. The reason America has the higher risk of fatal car accidents involved with teens and alcohol is due to the fact that we give teens their license first before they start drinking. Teens need to be able to limit themselves and learn to control their alcoholic tendencies by experiencing this form of responsibility. Without the accompaniment of a driver's license, they have approximately a full two years or more to learn how to control this. Germany proves that this is a better legal requirement by showing that they have a considerable less amount of fatal-car accidents involving teens and alcohol than the United States. Shown in a 2015 survey from a statista chart, the United States has an alarming rate of 31% of road accident deaths involving alcohol, while Germany has a much lesser percentage of 9% of road accident deaths involving alcohol.
people time to learn how to control their drinking habits before they start driving. This would eventually decrease the number of drunk drivers among adults as well. According to the Zero Tolerance Law, for drivers under 21, the United States has a No Tolerance Policy that does not allow any alcohol to be in the blood system while behind the wheel. Statistics show that there are car crashes every 51 minutes due to someone driving under the influence. Today, there is an alarming rate of DUI’s in teens, which tends to be growing over the past several years. The legal age of drinking should be lowered while the age of driving should be raised, that way teens learn to control their usage of alcohol before they are able to start driving. This would also help to decrease the amount of DUI’s in adults as well. This topic is about why the drinking age should be lowered while the driving age should be raised. The importance of this is to show that there would be a decrease in the number of driving under the influence accidents not only in teens, but also in adults as well. If the drinking were to be lowered binge drinking in young adults would also have a great decrease because when things are legal, people have less of a want to do them. It is understandable why people disagree with this solution, but they are wrong and for many reasons. Lowering the drinking age would be a beneficial improvement in our Society. The reason for this is that when you have a younger number of adults that have the legal ability to drink at a younger age, they do not have the urge to do it as much. This will eventually result in less consumption of alcohol in adults as well. If we do not come up with a solution for this problem, it will become an ongoing cycle. Also, if a person is old enough to serve and die for their country shouldn’t he or she be old enough to consume or purchase alcohol. According to a professor at Indiana University’s article, “ 22% of all students under 21 compared to 18% over 21 years of age are heavy drinkers.” Also, as drinking age pro and cons article states “there are 10.1 million underage drinkers in the United States.” and in addition “each year, approximately 5,000 people under the age of 21 die from causes related to underage drinking. These deaths include about 1,600homicides and 300 suicides.” These statistics are the perfect example of how the legal drinking age at the moment is not functioning as well as it should and why we should lower the legal age to a younger age. Research from Teenhelp.com shows that about five percent of teens are suffering with major depression at any one time. Some may argue that with this rate of teen depression, it would be imbecilic to give the availability of alcohol to a depressed teen where they could make a rash decision that will end their life. It is understandable why they would think this is the case, but in most cases, if the teen is already depressed, they will take their own life with or without alcohol in their system. Under age drinking is also one of the causes of many car accidents and injuries. This ties into the suggestion of lowering the drinking age. It is commonly thought that raising the driving age along with lowering the drinking age would be a helpful solution to many problems we are having in our country right now.
According to the Health Research Funding’s article, “drinking at a younger age makes individuals seven times more likely to be the offender of an alcohol-related vehicle crash.”, and also “out of all of the alcohol-related crashes that kill teenagers, approximately ¼ of the fatalities are underage drinkers”. This being said, our country obviously has a serious problem with underage drinkers relating with car accidents. When teenagers drink underage they are known to make impulsive decisions, but adding a license to the mix is asking for trouble. A simple fix for this is to raise the driving age to 19 and make it harder to get a license. The license process should entail of a series of questions along with a high cost to attain the license as well. “Almost one in four drivers believes the driving age should increase to 18 and statistics show that young motorists have poorer driving records than older drivers” as reported by Auto Express’ article about automobile driving. Germany is an example of a country that is using this method. Their legal age to drink is sixteen where as their legal driving age is eighteen and it’s made extremely difficult to obtain a license. Information from one.nhtsa’s article proves that Germany’s alcohol involved car fatalities percentage is much lower than the United State’s percentage. It shows that Germany has a 17% alcohol related car fatality rate, whereas the United States has a 38.6% alcohol related car fatality rate. Another statistic from Choose Responsibility’s article states that “ a recent NHTSA study that compared DUI laws in the United States to those in comparable nations, such as the European Union States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and Brazil, found that the United States had the highest proportion of traffic fatalities that were
alcohol-related among the twelve countries reporting data.” The legal drinking age of most all countries in the report was 18. The article also shows the statistic that in southern European nations ratios of all drinking occasion to intoxication occasions were one in ten, while in the United States, almost half of all drinking occasions resulted in intoxication. Not only would raising the legal driving age be solution to underage alcohol-related car accidents, but it would also be a valuable change for our economy. The reason it would be a valuable change for our economy is because it would decrease the amount of people driving, which in return decreases the amount of pollution in the air. It is also a possibility that the price of gas would decrease too as a result of not as many people needing it, also known as supply and demand. Another factor that plays along with underage drinking is an object called a fake identification, or most commonly known as a fake ID. Fake IDs can be easily obtained for a certain cost. Fake IDs are also usually used to obtain alcohol when an individual has not met the legal age requirement to buy it yet. A person can also get possible jail time for being caught with a fake ID. An article written by Livescience about underage drinking in accordance to fake Identification states “Underage college students who use fake IDs to get alcoholic drinks end up drinking more frequently, which may put them at higher risk for developing alcohol-use disorders later in life, researchers say. In a study of about 1,000 college students at a U.S. university, the researchers found that almost two-thirds of the study participants had used false IDs to buy alcohol at least once during college. On average, students used fake IDs about 25 percent of the time they drank alcohol before they turned 21, the legal drinking age in the United States. (Other times, the students obtained alcoholic drinks through legal-age friend or family members.) The more frequently the students used fake IDs, the more often they drank, according to the study, published in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research.” This article exemplifies how fake IDs contribute to the underage drinking dilemma. Another complication of underage drinking is binge drinkers. Underage drinkers can get alcohol through older friends who are able to buy the alcohol. This makes alcohol like a “forbidden fruit” to them, and they will get overly drunk because they do not know the next time they will be able to drink alcohol. This overly intoxication can result in death. According to MADD’s article about statistics on alcohol abuse “ underage teen alcohol abuse kills 4,700 people each year, which is more than all illegal drugs combined”. Also an article by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism wrote “People ages 12 through 20 drink 11 percent of all alcohol consumed in the United States. Although youth drink less often than adults do, when they do drink, they drink more. That is because young people consume more than 90 percent of their alcohol by binge drinking. Binge drinking is consuming many drinks on an occasion. Drinking alcohol and binge drinking become more prevalent as young people get older. 5.1 million young people reported binge drinking at least once in the past month, and 1.3 million young people reported binge drinking on 5 or more days over the past month”. These are great statistics that are proof that binge drinking is a terrible problem in relation to underage drinkers. The solution is simple, lower the drinking age so that the teens do not have the craving to binge drink. People may argue that the younger a person starts to drink, the more likely they will have alcohol dependence, but when you make something easily available to a teen there is less of a rebellious urge to use it. Information from the Does the World Have a Drinking Problem says “Americans aged 15 and up drink only three-quarters as much alcohol as Europeans, but are far more likely to be involved in fatal alcohol-related accidents or die from other alcohol-related causes. There’s no single reason Americans are less responsible with alcohol, but some speculate that a higher legal drinking age in the U.S. leads to more destructive underage drinking habits. Another explanation: Far more Europeans take public transportation home from the bar.” This article also concludes from a WHO survey in 2008 that there was seventy-one percent increase in drinking from teenagers thirteen to fifteen years old. This is a perfect example of how the legal age for driving and the legal age for drinking in the United States has a terrible relationship towards each other. Our legal age to drive being sixteen and our legal age to drink being twenty-one, whereas in Germany, for example, has a legal age to drive at eighteen with a much harder and expensive process to obtain their license and a legal age to drink at 16. The reason America has the higher risk of fatal car accidents involved with teens and alcohol is due to the fact that we give teens their license first before they start drinking. Teens need to be able to limit themselves and learn to control their alcoholic tendencies by experiencing this form of responsibility. Without the accompaniment of a driver's license, they have approximately a full two years or more to learn how to control this. Germany proves that this is a better legal requirement by showing that they have a considerable less amount of fatal-car accidents involving teens and alcohol than the United States. Shown in a 2015 survey from a statista chart, the United States has an alarming rate of 31% of road accident deaths involving alcohol, while Germany has a much lesser percentage of 9% of road accident deaths involving alcohol.