Quote:
Originally Posted by CamaroSkooter
I read the link as, "car crashes leading cause of teen death sinus," and was like, huh?
I got it now 
But in all seriousness, is this statistic really all that shocking to people? I don't mean to sound insensitive here, but isn't this just another "bleeding hearts" vs. "survival of the fittest" struggle?
Let me preface this by saying, I can't even begin to imagine the pain and suffering that a parent goes through when losing a child, and I wouldn't wish that on anyone.
But, statistically speaking, kids are going to do the stupidest things and in the end their survival depends on how stupid they want to act. Yes, there are always situations where a child dies and it's not attributed to them doing something dumb and that is truly tragic. But the overwhelming majority of teens that die in car crashes are the results of poor decision making, probably due to (and this is just my opinion here) a lack of parental oversight.
We're never going to see a teen mortality rate of zero (meaning every child survives their teens), but that doesn't stop these bleeding hearts from thinking they can enact laws or regulations that will attempt to attain that.
At some point you've got to say, "enough is enough," and recognize that there's only so much you can do to prepare people for the grim reality of life. This whole culture of "let's-put-warning-labels-on-everything" is starting to drive this country stupid.
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Hmm...I didn't realize I was so passionate about the subject.  [/rant] |
Quote:
Originally Posted by Unfair
Darwin's law?
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Even if you really feel this way, car crashes usually involve other people. Survival of the Fittest doesn't mean "Survival of those lucky enough to not be in the way of the not fit."
The other day I got a phone call from a survey company asking me if I thought the government was too lax or too strict on safety standards for cars. I told them point blank that I thought the government was going about things the wrong way. I believe that we need to be more strict on driver's education. The whole 16 vs 18 debate is pointless because really, we're not that much more mature at 18 than we are at 16. You want mature drivers, restrict the driving age to 25. But then you'll end up with a bunch of inexperienced 25 year olds.
What we need to do (in my opinion) is toughen our education requirements. When I got my license, drivers ed was not mandatory. And most of the people who did take driver's ed took it through a local driving school (that will remain unnamed). Thats where most of my friends got their driver's ed. The thing is, though - apparently in the entire course you were only required to have about 15 hours of on the road practice. I was shocked when I found that out. I got my driver's ed through a state issued home-taught driver's ed program, and by the time I finished the program I had almost 200 hours on the road and easily double that in classroom instruction (books and videos and whatnot). I passed the drivers test on the first try with a 97%, but very few of my friends passed with higher than an 80% (passing score is a 70%) and one of my friends even had to take the test seven times before passing.
Sorry for the rant.
- X