It's late at night, your friends are in the car. You're driving, windows down, summer air blowing through your hair. You just got your full license, and everyone’s been waiting for you to be able to drive them around. You stick your hand out the window, and press the gas a little more. Your friends shout along to the music, and you can't help but smile more. Without thinking, focused on the song and your friends, your right foot leans heavy on the pedal. Your eyes snap to the road and you see a couple deer, staring terrified at your car, throttling to them, too fast. There's no time to stop, but you slam on the brakes anyways. You even swerve, only for your car to roll off the road anyways. 

The hard truth about teen driving is that it doesn't always end well. 

It's invigorating for some, with their foot on the gas and the trees speeding by. It's practical for others, running late to practice, to put the pedal to the metal and go just a few miles over the speed limit. 

But for others, those few miles over are a death sentence. 

Car crashes are one of the leading causes of death in teens, as noted by the National Household Travel Survey. Teens account for seven percent of all motor vehicle deaths, when they represent just three percent of drivers. Such high rates are unacceptable when we have the ability and resources needed to fix them. It's crucial that we nourish the new generations in order to ensure capable adults inherit a promising world, which means protecting teens as much as possible, especially in terms of driving. A solution to these worrying statistics could be requiring a more developed drivers education program, to allow teens ample understanding of the real risks associated with driving. In a more perfect world, the improved program would also delve deeper into defensive driving and risk reduction, along with more guided practice. 

In my own personal experience, drivers ed was a long, boring slew of seemingly unending, unimportant information. Looking back, I understand that the lessons taught were important, and I’m still grateful I powered through and paid attention. Drivers education programs are a crucial tool to ensure teen safety, but in their current state, it’s difficult for them to be as effective. As my peers have so eagerly told me, drivers ed is, at the moment, a waste of their money and time. If drivers ed became more catered to teenage attention spans and modern needs, the benefits from it would become more apparent. Instead of three hour classes with one break, more, shorter, classes would fit teens schedules and needs better. In addition, more hands-on experience, or engaging lessons could pique interest. Teens would receive and understand more from these courses, and appreciate them to a higher extent. This would allow for strategies taught in the program to be applied more thoroughly in real life situations, as the information becomes valued. When teens value their education, they dedicate themselves to learning and improving. As they do these things with drivers ed, they’ll become less flippant about road safety, decreasing teen car crash fatalities. 

The same survey found that the fatality rate of car crashes for sixteen to nineteen year olds is approximately 3 times more than those over twenty. This increased risk is due mainly to distracted driving, which is all too common in teenagers, for many reasons. Lots of kids think it's fun to speed. Others are influenced by alcohol or friends. No matter the case, distracted driving is a major issue that impacts everyone on and off the road. Reducing distractions in cars with teenage drivers is completely necessary to keep the roads free of accidents. Whether that be cell phone restrictions, stronger repercussions for ignored rules, or even passenger limitations, we need to take further actions to ensure the safety of our nation's future. 

Teens in the driver’s seat are inexperienced, and often very susceptible to peer pressure. These factors exponentially increase the likelihood of an accident, especially when teens drive at night, or drive drunk. Mixing all these dangerous factors into one, rowdy, teenage emotion filled car spells only disaster. So we need to take action now to prevent tragedies before they occur, through restrictions on phone use while driving, increased education about the real dangers of drunk and distracted driving and more. 

Distracted or unsafe driving impacts everyone, not just the people involved in accidents. The whole community feels the fallout from teens injured or killed in car crashes. Just recently, a girl came into practice with bandaged arms and legs. I asked a friend what had happened to her, and received a wide-eyed retelling of a terrifying car accident. A sixteen year old, driving a friend's truck - unlicensed - with eight other teenagers, and drunk, drove into a divider. Luckily, my teammate had no major injuries, but the same can't be said for the others involved. A devastating reminder of the dangers of teen driving, my community was shaken, and unsure. What can possibly fix this situation? 

What needs to be done is develop more comprehensive driving instruction for teens or increase the difficulty of drivers license tests, in order to assure sufficient road safety knowledge. If we lower the risk factors of teen driving, the fatalities and injuries incurred would drop significantly. Families and communities can remain untouched by the adversities of accidents and crashes.