Making The Roads Safer

Out of all the different age ranges of drivers, surprisingly, older people hold the highest risk of causing fatal accidents. Although driving places is necessary for the elderly to maintain their independent living, they are at the highest rate for causing an accident. If there was a mandatory law making people must retake their road test every few years starting at a certain age, this would make roads much safer for both the individual and everybody else on the roads. With the elderly having much less of a reaction time than younger drivers, their lives are put at a much higher risk. The creation of a mandatory road test that would be completed every few years will help make roads safer by eliminating people who are ill prepared to continue driving.

The older you are, the lower your reaction time is, and when you are sixty, your reaction time is almost cut in half from when you were younger as a teenager. Reaction time is very much needed when operating a vehicle, with many sudden stops and obstacles in the roads, you must be able to pay full attention to driving and be ready for anything. Along with slower reaction time, their driving in generally is at an unsafe performance. According to a study, elderly drivers are more prone to making bad decisions in the moment when driving, direction and lane control, speed performance, trouble recognizing and responding to signs and traffic lights, and lastly have bad skills involved in turning and parking (Vichitvanichphong et.al. 8). With the ability to make the elderly retake their driving tests, every few years would help keep the road much safer and save many lives.

According to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, drivers at and over seventy years of age, their rates of accidents and fatal crashes per mile driven rise and surpass levels of the youngest most accident-prone drivers. At eighty they have the highest rate of fatal accidents recorded (Gafni 2). With the ability of taking the driving test every few years it would help keep people up to date with their driving. It would also filter out people who shouldn’t be driving on the roads because it is unsafe for them. For example, once someone starts having seizures, their license is generally revoked until proven better health. Over the many years that these people have had their license, they may have developed an illness or injury that may have caused an issue with their driving that would make it extremely unsafe for themselves and the rest of the individuals on the roads.

On the other side of the spectrum, the elderly need a way to get from one place to another. Taking away their right to drive or forcing them to retake their tests again and again would be unethical towards the elderly. For them, driving is the easiest means of transportation to travel during their everyday lives. Taking this right away from a select few who are considered dangerous drivers would hinder their lives in a very negative way. Having it so that everyone must take multiple drivers test throughout their lives would help eliminate people who shouldn’t be on the roads rather than focusing strictly on the elderly.

Yearly renewals of peoples driving test would make sure that everyone on the roads have the ability to drive properly. With this system in place the roads will become a much safer place for anyone on them. With the ability to produce a system to help eliminate drivers that shouldn’t be on the roads due to physical or mental illness would make driving much safer for the everyday man. The impact of something of this caliber could save tons of lives, young or old, by getting that one person off the road that shouldn’t have the ability to drive.

Work Cited

Vichitvanichphong, Suchada, et al. “What Does Happen to Our Driving When We Get Older?.” Transport Reviews, vol. 35, no. 1, Jan. 2015, pp. 56-81. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1080/01441647.2014.997819.

Gafni, Matthias. “Should older drivers undergo road tests to keep licenses?” Mercury News. 3 October 2015. http://www.mercurynews.com/2015/10/03/should-older-drivers-undergo-road-tests-to-keep-licenses/, 25 April 2017

Nozawa, Takayuki, et al. “Effects of Different Types of Cognitive Training on Cognitive Function, Brain Structure, and Driving Safety in Senior Daily Drivers: A Pilot Study.” Behavioral Neurology, vol. 2015, 16 June 2015, pp. 1-18. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1155/2015/525901.

Stress

 

Have you ever been so pressed for time or have been so overwhelmed by everything going on in your life? That anxiety that builds up inside of you is stress. Stress is a response of the human body to any stimulus that disrupts the individual’s homeostasis. Homeostasis is the tendency toward a relatively stable equilibrium between interdependent elements, especially as maintained by physiological processes. Stress causes individuals to be faced with the constant urge to maintain internal balance. (Wilburn 2).  It is one of the top contributors towards suicide in young adolescents. Approximately 14 adolescents in the United States commit suicide each day (Wilburn 2). Having a lot of stress can cause other disorders like lower self-esteem and depression, which in the long run could all be combined to cause suicidal thoughts.

Everyone knows the feeling of stress, the buildup of anxiety that forms inside of you. When someone is stressed almost every thought going through his or her mind is negative. Stress can be acquired by: academic pressure good or bad, work related problems, interpersonal difficulties, death of a loved one, loss of relationships, bullying, etc. Stress is most common in young adolescents and college students, the ones who are pushed by their parents and society to strive for greatness. People who are extremely stressed or people that get stressed very easily frequently are at a higher risk of suicide or suicidal thoughts.

Most people have low self-esteem, thinking poorly of themselves and what they do. These people can easily become stressed by the way they view themselves on their looks and their work ethic. This also works the other way, people can develop stress first and then their viewpoint can change on themselves making their self-esteem lower greatly. With the combination of the two people look down on themselves and have a major chance to become depressed or at risk for suicidal thoughts.

Extreme amounts of stress and low self-esteem can be combined to cause depression. Depression is also a one of the top leaders for a cause that people commit suicide. Depression is a mood disorder that causes a persistent feeling of sadness and loss of interest. If someone were to revive all three of these illnesses they will be at extreme risk for suicidal thoughts.

At the college level, most students are in tough times, low on money, have no time for friends, homework, and even for themselves. This causes a lot of stress because they can’t get everything done that they want to and sometimes not get what must be done on time. College students are more likely to drop out of school, or cause them to have suicidal thoughts,

Suicide can be linked to many things, some being disorders or diseases, others being stress and depression. None of these disorders are permeant, people with these disorders can seek help to further help with there problems. Stress is something that is something that comes and goes, but suicide is permanent, suicide should never be answer to any problem.

 

Worked Cited

 

Dransart, Dolores Angela Castelli, et al. “Stress Reactions After a Patient Suicide and Their         Relations to the Profile of Mental Health Professionals.” BMC Psychiatry, vol. 15, 28   Oct. 2015, pp. 1-9. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1186/s12888-015-0655-y.

 

Smith, Sydney S., et al. “Mediating Effects of Stress, Weight-Related Issues, and Depression on Suicidality in College Students.” Journal of American College Health, vol. 63, no. 1, 01          Jan. 2015, pp. 1-12. EBSCOhost,   search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eric&AN=EJ1047921&site=ehost-        live.           

 

Wilburn, Victor R. and Delores E. Smith. “Stress, Self-Esteem, and Suicidal Ideation in Late             Adolescents.” Adolescence San Diego, vol. 40, no. 157, 01 Mar. 2005, p. 33.         EBSCOhost,             search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eric&AN=EJ697016&site=ehost-live.  

 

First Broken Bones

When I was younger, I believed that I could do anything and that I was invincible. Being young, I never once thought that anything could go wrong or that I would never be in any kind of danger being surrounded by people that I know. All of that changed in a blink of an eye, seconds passed and everything went from fun and games to pain. I never experienced any sort of agony that could ever compare to that. My whole perspective of the world and life changed after this eventful day.

Even though this day was around six or seven years ago, I remember that whole day like it was yesterday. It was a rather chilly day in late March or early April and the sun was shining bright. It was the last game of basketball of the season, we finished with a winning record, but we unfortunately didn’t make the playoffs. After every season, we would go to my coach’s house and have a big party with all my other teammates and their families. At the time, we were all young boys and full of energy, majority of us were running around with no fear of the world. We soon then decided to play football, but midway through the game of football the rules somehow changed to tackle.

We were all taking each other to the ground and piling up on top each other afterwards when someone was on the ground with the ball. It had to be the third or fourth time that I had gotten the ball was the moment that changed in my life drastically. The adrenaline was pumping through my body when I got the ball, trying not to get tackled as I ran down the field until I came to a sudden stop. I ran into one of my good friends, he was much taller and bigger than I was at the time and easily started pushing me back the way I came from. With assistance from another one of my friends, they forced me to the ground. While falling, I stuck out my hands to lessen the impact I was doomed to take. With my luck my hand landed awkwardly with my fingers hitting the ground first and completely bending them in the wrong direction. At first I thought nothing of it, instant pain but I didn’t think anything was wrong. A minute later, only sheer pain filled my hand.

Never have I ever felt pain like this, my fingers swelled up so quickly that they were unable to bend inward. I knew nothing back then and all I thought about was how I wasn’t going to be able to use my fingers ever again. My parents rushed me to the hospital, after sitting there for hours I came to find out that I fractured the metacarpals of my three middle fingers on my right hand in 6 different spot amongst them. Nothing to this day has ever come close to the pain that I felt this day. It majorly changed how I view everyday life and how anything could happen in the blink of an eye.

College Book Writers are Stealing your Money

 

 For years now, college students have been paying hundreds of dollars out of their hard-earned money just for them to purchase books for their specific classes. That’s just a small amount of money thrown atop of the few thousands of dollars that they are already paying to attended these college classes. On average students are paying around 655 dollars on textbooks a year, per the National Association of College Stores (NACS) (Zekri 2). For some people, like me, who are paying for both college and books by themselves, without any financial aid or scholarships, with their hard-earned money are struggling. By making college textbooks cheaper and or implementing a rental system through the school’s bookstore could help everyone who needs to purchase these expensive books for less money.

            Many, if not all, college students would rather not have to pay hundreds of dollars for a certain textbook, especially if you must pay for multiple books. Some of these students have more important things to spend their money on rather than dropping all their money on books. Most students work part time jobs after their college classes and use that money to pay for everything. Some may have more important things to put their money into, like supporting their families, or even children. Others may have to pay for bills, and even for transportation so that they can attend their classes. Making these books cheaper would help all the people who need to spend their money elsewhere.

            Paying all this money for these expensive textbooks to barely use them or not even open them is such a major annoyance. For you to be paying around a hundred dollars for these books and to only be using a select number of pages just as a reference is not worth the hassle. If this is the case for your class, which is a lot of them, most classes aren’t orientated over the book. If this is the case the professor should know how much you would use your book and inform the class whether, you would need to purchase it or not. If you are not using the book to its full potential, they should not be worth full prices to get them. The value of the book is not at the value that you would need it for.

            People who are unable to qualify or get financial aid and have no scholarship money should have another way for them to get college textbooks for free or a discounted price. Some colleges around the United States have started programs within their own colleges to help students who are struggling or even students who don’t want to pay the inflexed amount of money to buy textbooks elsewhere. The school’s bookstores hold a rental program in which students use their school’s IDs to rent their books for low cost or to the extent of being free. If their rented books are damaged or lost the students account will be charged with the equal amount of money to replace or fix the broken one.

            On the other side of the argument, a small group of people or even an individual, work through countless hours to print and write multiple volumes and editions of all these textbooks. These people have worked so hard to make a textbook with all the required information and can keep it organized, and up to date. They only make around 18 cents out of every dollar spent on the books. The company that they use to print and publish their books take the other 82 cents to cover all the other needs that are needed to print even more textbooks. (Segal 2). By lowering these prices, it would cause the writer of the textbooks to not make anywhere near the money they are making right now. It would cut their income almost in half if textbook prices would go down.

            Lowering the prices on college textbooks would help every college student with their thousands of dollars that they will be placed in debt for just attending the college to get their degree. By simply creating a rental program within the school, may save students a few hundred dollars of their hard earn cash.

Work Cited

Esposito, Joseph. “Why Are College Textbooks So Expensive.” The Scholarly Kitchen. Society for Scholarly P`ublishing, 10 October, 2012. https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2012/10/10/why-are-college-textbooks-so-expensive. 14 February, 2017.

Segal, Matthew. “A federal higher education advocate explains why college textbooks are so expensive — and what we can do to change that.” Business Insider. Business Insider Inc., 24 August, 2015. http://www.businessinsider.com/why-are-college-textbooks-so-costly-2015-8. 14 February, 2017

Zekri, Iman. “Textbooks Should Be Free Through A Bookstore Rental Program.” Eagle News. Florida Gulf Coast University, 7 February, 2016. http://eaglenews.org/opinion/textbooks-should-be-free-through-a-bookstore-rental-program/. 14, February, 2017