Scholarship Application -- Drunk Driving

Scholarship Application -- Drunk Driving Issues

The topic of drunk driving is one that is very important to me on a personal level. That is because I came very close to losing my only brother to a drunk-driving accident. He drove is car into a tree and flipped it over several times; it was an accident that could easily have killed him. He recovered from his physical injuries but in some ways, I never completely recovered from it emotionally. Knowing how close I came to losing my brother to a senseless and careless act changed the way I look at drunk driving as an issue in society.

Since then, I have been actively involved in sharing my story with other teens because I know that many of my peers simply do not appreciate the importance of the issue. Many of them ignore the fact that they are prohibited by law from drinking alcohol in the first place. While I do not presume to judge their choice to drink before they are allowed to, I have found that those who are most comfortable ignoring the legal drinking age are also the same people who tend to be the least responsible more generally. The fact of the matter is that teenage drivers are already the most likely drivers to be involved in car accidents, even when they do not drink alcohol. That is because teenagers in general are the least experienced as drivers and because teenagers and young adults do not yet have the necessary cognitive maturity to accurately perceive and weigh relative risks.

When the variable of alcohol is added to that formula, it is a recipe for disaster. In addition to being the most inexperienced drivers who also lack the ability to make the best decisions in relation to risks, teenage and young adults are also the least experienced drinkers. While drinking any alcohol (even without exceeding the statutory limit for intoxication) is never a good decision by anybody who plans on driving later, at least older adults have enough experience drinking to know how their bodies react to alcohol and when to stop drinking to avoid becoming illegally intoxicated. By contrast, teenagers who begin drinking before they are allowed to and young adults who just started drinking at the age of 21 frequently drink so much they become extremely intoxicated even when they do not mean to. They overestimate their ability to function; they underestimate their relative degree of impairment from alcohol; and they are the most prone to becoming more bold and more careless (or fearless) when they are intoxicated.