I pulled into the bike lane and jumped out of the car to confront the other driver. My arms shook while they slammed the door behind me – my brain wasn’t processing anything yet.
“Are you alright?” The driver asked mechanically while peering down at a text message I could only assume she had been crafting when she pulled out in front of me without looking. At the intersection where the accident took place, cars traveling north or south had the right of way and no stop sign while the east or westbound cars had to wait until they could safely continue straight or turn. By the time I saw her car pull out, about four feet in front of me, we were headed for a pretty extreme collision.
When she looked up I could have sworn she was no older than 14, though logically she must have been 16 to be behind the wheel, and I felt an air of superiority. People your age shouldn’t be allowed on the roads, I wanted to scream, though my own age was a year more, at most.
We were both injury-free and our parents’ equally dusty, worn-down mini-vans were still drivable, though significantly dented. The accident had the potential to be a catastrophe, but since there were no vehicles in the oncoming traffic lane when I swerved in an attempt to miss her car, disaster was avoided.
The driver turned out to be 18. Legally, she was an adult, but her appearance was unmistakably that of a child. As she lamented missing the midnight movie she had planned on sneaking out to see with her friends, a kind of movie-montage style scene ran through my mind (with the background song Nirvana's "Smells like Teen Spirit") of every near disastrous situation I’d experienced with my friends or me behind the wheel, Drivers texting and missing stop signs or running red lights, my own races to meet my curfew, friends who admitted to driving under the influence – there were enough instances to keep me reminiscing for hours.
I remembered getting my license: a quick spin around the block, three-second counts at a few stop signs, and before I knew it I had this powerful vehicle under my control. A teen is supposed to have logged at least 50 hours of driving before even registering to take a license test, but does anyone actually follow that rule? It’s easy for inexperienced teens to pass a driver’s test still completely unprepared for driving alone.
And I haven’t even addressed the texting issue. Nearly 50 percent of teens admit to texting while driving, according to a 2007 survey conducted by AAA, and 21 percent of fatal car accidents each year are a result of cell phone usage.
Teens are notorious for being unsafe drivers. We can put the blame on inexperience, but the extreme desire to take risks and the mindset that one is invincible are fundamental teenage characteristics as well, and these characteristics inevitably manifest themselves on the road.
A driver’s license is a symbol of power and independence for a teenager, but being able to drive does not guarantee freedom from parental restrictions. Driving comes with the price of filling up the tank, driving a little brother to soccer practice, an earlier curfew in my case.
The initial excitement of the license is subdued by the rules that come along with it, like seeing one of those flashing internet ads that say “congratulations, you’ve won $10,000,” for the first time. When you click on the ad, of course, you get a computer virus and subscribe to 200 magazines before you can receive the prize.
Since teens don’t inherit complete independence with their licenses, they exercise their power by abusing the rules. Maybe they don’t always do so consciously, but most teen drivers I know feel immense pleasure from speeding or driving past the junior license curfew.
I don’t want to criminalize my peers, and maybe I’m just bitter because of my recent brush with disaster, but something is very wrong with the teenage mindset about driving. Many of the dangers we face on the road would disappear if the driving age were raised by a few years.
So am I going to resign from the road until I’ve reached the age I believe is more appropriate for driving? No, because I’ve had experience with dangerous teenage driving habits and I like to think I’ve emerged a safer driver.
Plus, driving is just plain practical. Did we forget that that’s why the transportation medium exists to begin with?
I use my license all the time, so of course I don’t want teen driving to be abolished altogether. But teens, let’s take our aggression out in sports or screaming during a concert and let’s text when we get home. Your parents will be much more pissed at you if you get in a car accident than if you come home past curfew – trust me.
- Zoe Feingold
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