When the lunch bell rings, hundreds of students pour into the parking lot. The majority of them take their friends to their favorite lunch hangout. However, many of these kids have had their license for a year, and are illegally driving their friends.

Unless a student is 18 or older or has had their license for a year, they are unable to drive minors that are not related to them. These students driving other teens know what the law is, so why do they ignore it.

The law is greatly flawed and unenforced because there is not a way to tell if someone driving has had their license for a year, so the only way these people get caught is if they are already pulled over for something else. Integrity is crucial with this law because if teens followed it then we could change the perception of reckless teen drivers.

Some teens argue that after six months of driving with your permit and passing the behind the wheel test, they understand the rules of the road well enough to drive their friends. However, people who are more experienced drivers are more likely to be prepared for something bad to happen and do not get distracted as easily.

According to Statefarm’s recent studies, the fatality rate for drivers age 16 to 19 is four times that of drivers age 25 to 69 years.  Also, about two-thirds of teen passenger crashes occur when another teen is driving. Clearly this law was made for a good reason and if more people followed it, we would decrease the amount of teenage deaths by car crashes.

Teens have been breaking this law for quite some time, and they seem to have conveniently forgotten that it is still a law. By breaking it they put their lives, the lives of the people they are driving, as well as the other people on the road in danger.

Even if the teen driver has never crashed or made any serious mistakes, their passenger  could distract them and cause them to make a terrible mistake. It is not worth the risk to drive someone, wait until you have had your license for a year. Considering that in the past year, twenty percent of juniors in high school have reported being in a car crash, we should not risk our lives and the lives of others.

We can change these statistics simply by following the law, and encouraging others to do so as well. Instead of following others and giving into peer pressure we should take the high road (pun intended) and continue to make smart choices. Making this small change will save lives and show our parents and society that we as teens are responsible.