Sophomore year in high school is one of the most dangerous
points in a student’s life. Typically,
students turn sixteen their second year of high school and are eligible to
acquire their learners permit to drive a car. Later down the road (ha no pun
intended) when they are sixteen and half they acquire their junior operator license.
From personal experience I can honestly say that this system is messed up. If
drinking alcohol at the age of sixteen is dangerous, do you think operating
something that weighs more than a ton is safe? In fact, the human brain isn’t fully
mature until around the age of twenty-five, therefore a sixteen year old
shouldn’t be responsible of something that costs thousands of dollars.
However, as much as I enjoy driving my own car, escaping my
parents, and hanging with friends, I know there are at least five moments each
week when I am endangered by another car. Whether it is someone cutting me off
or almost hitting me, I am not in a safe position and neither are my
passengers. When I can actually see the other driver, it is most commonly a person
who is either younger, the same age, or a few years older than myself. For example,
last week I was driving along the part of the school where the guard rail is. I
do this every morning, but last week as I am driving at twenty-two miles per
hour, a car begins to back out of its spot as I drive by. I immediately beep,
but the car does not stop. I slam my foot on the gas to get away. As I look in
my rear view mirror I see that the car still never slowed down after I passed. It
was a student driving.
Everyone considers them self a good safe driver, including
myself. But we are all wrong. Can you honestly say you stopped for a full four
seconds at the last stop sign you were at? Or did you just kind of look both
ways as you were gliding through? Not to sound dark or pessimistic, but the next
time you do that, it could be your last time. You never know who is coming the
other way or who is around the next corner. Teenagers are young and stupid and
don’t care much for rules, so why did the government think they would follow
the rules of the road? Look both ways. Red means stop. Green means go. It’s not
as simple as it sounds. Around the world the average minimum driving age is
eighteen, but even then, you are not as smart as you think you are.
Maddy, I struggle with this post. In addition to reading more like a rant than a substantive argument, the writing is uncharacteristically weak. The entire post is replete with examples of less-than-precise writing, but I will focus only on the first paragraph. The very first sentence lacks precision. Can one really equate an entire year with a "point." Is "sophomore year" merely a "point"? If you didn't intend the pun with "Later down the road," then you definitely should not have used this expression. This is a perfect example of a silly metaphor that George Orwell would have criticized. This sentence does not make sense: "If drinking alcohol at the age of sixteen is dangerous, do you think operating something that weighs more than a ton is safe?" This is not a legitimate comparison, and grammatically, the sentence violates the rules of parallelism. Essentially, you're doing nothing but writing, "If the sky is blue, do you think that the Red Sox will win the World Series?" Your final sentence in the first paragraph is similarly odd. Why does the monetary value of the car make a difference?
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