Thursday, January 26, 2012
Teens and Driving: Should the Driving Age Be Raised?
When your mom tells you for the 4th time that she’s too tired to drive you to the mall, don’t you wish for the day you turn 16, get your license, and are able to drive yourself anywhere you want to go? Well, that may not happen. State lawmakers in the US are now finding that car crashes are the leading causes of death for teens, and are now debating over whether to raise the driving age to 17 or even 18. What do you think? Should the state driving age be raised?
States Urged to Raise the Driving Age
Source 1:
In their online article, “States Urged to Raise the Driving Age,” CBS News persuades state lawmakers to raise their current driving age to 17 or 18. CBS News’ viewpoint is that making teenagers wait a year or two to drive on the road will save many of their lives from fatal car accidents. The author drives out his purpose by displaying the problem as car crashes being the leading cause of deaths among teenagers, and bringing forth a solution- raising the state driving age, in order to make readers want to immediately solve the problem to decrease the number of driving accidents. Conflicting evidence is given in the article to inform readers of the downside of the argument such as “parents having to chauffeur their teens” and “worrying too much about teen drivers”. The author uses smart, statistical vocabulary such as “studies” and “data”, making the article seem factual and correct. The author also uses logos because the article is mostly statistics involving teen car accidents and benefits from graduated licenses. This source is reliable because it is a website formed by a well-known news station, has few ads, and includes interviews from many scholars.
Driving Age, Raise to 18
Source 2:
In his web page, “Driving Age, Raise to 18,” Alastair Endersby informs debaters of the dilemma many state lawmakers are facing, whether the driving age should be raised to 18 or not. The site is meant to give debate topics, and is designed in a “pro vs. con” layout and gives facts and thoughts for each side to argue about. Therefore, the author doesn’t have a viewpoint and remains very unbiased, opting out of displaying his opinion through his work. Instead, he has an equal amount of arguments on each side, as not to slant one’s opinion, but to make a fair debate. This also means there is no conflicting evidence, because the author can not have information that goes against his viewpoint which is not given. Instead, Endersby has information that conflicts against one another.
Based on the “pro vs. con” t-chart, debaters can easily see the different viewpoints of the topic compared and contrasted on the page (the side that wants the driving age to be raised, and the side that doesn’t), making it simple for debaters to choose sides and use the arguments to make their case.
The article contains neutral vocabulary, probably chosen to prevent a slant or bias in the text. For example, Endersby uses the words “could”, and “would” a lot to show that he is not for one side or for one opinion. It also shows he is not making the decision for others or displaying his viewpoint, he is simply leaving it up to the reader.
Overall, this sight is somewhat reliable. The author’s background that is put above the t-chart tells readers that Alastair Endersby is a teacher from the United Kingdom who used to coach debate teams. Readers can tell he is not from the US because certain words he uses are misspelled or considered incorrect here in America, such as “behaviour” and “labour”. Also, the date on which this web page was last modified is December of 2008, which means this information may not be completely up to date. However, there are no ads and the site looks very professional.
Teenage Driving
Source 3:
In the article, “Teenage Driving,” Chad H. persuades state lawmakers to keep the driving age at 16. Chad’s viewpoint is that the age of the driver is not the root of the problem and that an older person with the same level of experience is just as likely to get in an accident. He refers to a study done by NHTSA (National Highway Traffic Safety Association) in 2005 showing that 23% of drivers killed between the ages of 15-20 were either drunk or intoxicated. This piece of evidence supports the author’s viewpoint, pointing out that it wasn’t careless, immature driving that caused the accident, but what the teens had done before driving that had.
The article is formatted in a descriptive structure, as it analyzes the bad aspects of the proposed law changes, but not enough of the good aspects and how it could help benefit young drivers. With that being said, conflicting evidence is given at the beginning of the article when the author includes facts and statistics such as “car accidents have become the leading cause of death for teenagers” and “sixteen year-olds were found to have higher crash ratings than any age of driver”. The author also goes on to give other facts about texting-and-driving in teenagers and teen death numbers. But, however, the author disagrees with this information and argues his viewpoint later on in the article. Chad’s vocabulary is very matter-of-fact throughout his article as he uses phrases such as “face the facts,” “doesn’t matter,” and “put the worries aside,” not to mention his unlimited use of the word “just”. He is definitely trying to slant his article to make it seem like keeping the driving age the same is the obvious choice. If he hadn’t tried to do this, he could easily have eliminated these words from the text.
The author uses a combination of ethos and logos in his article. Logos is used at the beginning when he is giving statistics on the NHTSA study and giving information on the conflicting viewpoint. For the most part, ethos is used evident by the matter-of-fact vocabulary and the author’s comparison of a new teenage driver to a new 50-year-old driver.
This source of information is somewhat reliable. The article does not display the date it was last modified, questioning the information received. Is it recent? Does it still apply to today? Also, the author does not include background information on himself, only an initial for his last name. Judging by the website, which is teenink.com, the author is probably still a teenager. It is very easy to hypothesize that the teen’s bias toward changing the driving age definitely showed in his article. However, facts and statistics are also included in the article, although a bibliography wasn’t.
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