With the increase of traffic accidents in recent years, the topic of improving road safety has been brought up to debate. While some believe that the most effective measure is to increase legal age for managing vehicles, other argue that such method is ineffective compared to solution such as strengthening punishments on driving after consuming alcohol. This essay will look at both perspective and reach a final conclusion.
On the one hand, it is undeniable that young drivers is a large contributing factor to the rising amount of traffic accidents, thus making increasing driving age a sensible choice to enhance road safety. Youths are noted to be more reckless and careless than the older generation, often making small mistakes or ignoring traffic rules while managing a vehicle. Therefore, they are prone to cause more accidents on the road. It is also widely agreed that due to the leniency of the law towards people under 18, this generation is less likely to feel remorse or learn from the mistakes they make unless it is a severe or fatal one. Due to the threats young people may pose when managing vehicles, it would be worth considering to completely prevent them from riding or driving by increasing minimum legal driving age.
On the other hand, as road safety is constructed of several factors, strengthening punishments on alcoholic drivers might be less a controversial measure with more likelihood of success. While youths take up a large portion of reckless drivers, they are not the only one. Drivers who have consumed alcohol also pose a threat to road safety due to their inability to control their behaviors. Moreover, the accidents caused by alcoholic drivers tend to be more severe and happen more frequently that accidents caused by young drivers. Therefore, it would be a more sensible approach to reduce the amount of alcoholic drivers, who are guaranteed to cause accidents, than reducing youth drivers, who only have a chance of causing them. This outcome would be achieved by strengthening punishments on this kind of drivers, as the more they have to compensate for the mistakes the make, the less likely they will commit them again.
In conclusion, while increasing legal driving age might play a key role in enhancing road safety and reducing accidents, approaches such as reinforcing punishments on driver on alcohol would also achieve the intended outcome with less controversies. Therefore, to my perspective, the benefits of the latter measure greatly outweigh the advantages of the former. With the reduction of alcoholic drivers on the road, the safety of all drivers and pedestrians will be ensured more thoroughly.