Rural Teen Drivers at Risk Commentary

Wesley made some really valid points regarding student drivers and rural roads. He also confirmed that this is a problem when he admitted that he had done practically everything the article outlined that young student drivers do: drive with too many people in a vehicle, underage drinking, speeding and loud music all after dark. A couple of things he didn’t include but has a large part in these incidents is cell phone use and text messaging while driving and drug use, speeding and street racing. The article quoted a student that admits to texting short messages while driving, but waits until a stopping point to text longer messages. Cell phones are such a huge part of our society especially among teens and yet parents forget or don’t enforce rules of the road regarding cell phones. Teen drinking and driving is also a very dangerous activity, not to mention illegal. Most teens simply think they won’t get caught.

Not all rural roadways are curvy and bumpy however, some are long and straight, allowing to driver to speed more than they should. It can lead young drivers to come up on cars unexpected corners too fast.

I agree that more lighting and street signs could be used, but what about increased education in the driver’s education classes or high school about the dangers of drinking and driving and cell phone use? The article talks about an increased advertising campaign to improve awareness, I think that many different venues can be used to achieve this. Parents also need to be very involved with knowing where their children are and making sure that they obey the laws and teach them consequences for not following the rules.

Unfortunately, this will probably always be a problem on some level because young adults will always feel invincible, challenge rules and just take things too far.

Wesley did a nice job of relating his personal experience into the facts of the story, but was weak in coming up with suggestions for solving this epidemic.