Teen Drivers Are a Threat

It's a normal Friday night and Alicia is getting ready to leave to go get ice cream with a normal sixteen year old boy. Her father, Dr. Arturo Betancourt and his wife Lulu, confirm it is all right for her to go out, but first they had to meet the boy and told her she had to be home by curfew. "I want to speak to him," Dr. Betancourt told Alicia. He even reminded her to avoid distracting him when he's driving (Stafford, 3). Sometimes Alicia would complain about her early curfew, but she always obeyed it. That night she didn't come home. Several hours after Alicia's curfew the Betancourt's began to worry so they decided to call the cops. The dispatcher spoke calmly and asked them to stay at home. It was at this moment that Dr. Arturo Betancourt realized his daughter was dead! Alicia, who was wearing a seatbelt, had been killed instantly in a terrible crash. The young male driver had lost control of the car and hit a utility pole. (Stafford 9) Weeks after the crash, Alicia's father began looking online for anything that had to do with teen driving. He was especially surprised to find out that teenagers have the highest crash and death rates on the road, especially sixteen year olds who are at the greatest risk (Stafford 11). Incidents and depressing stories such as this happen throughout the nation and began to multiply as the years go by. Some experts are even calling this a "national health epidemic" (Stafford 14). Many experts agree that something needs to be done, "If we had any other disease that was wiping out our teenagers at the rate of thousands per year, there would be no end to what we would do as a society to stop that," says traffic expert Dr. Runge (Stafford, 15). Clearly, the best and most obvious answer is to raise the minimum driving age. Throughout this paper I will discuss and argue why it would be best to raise the minimum driving age to the age of eighteen. It is reported that there are more teen fatalities on the road each year than the

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