Do you read the ads?

This morning I noticed a full page ad for Allstate.

Why do most 16 year olds drive like they are missing part of their brain? Because they are." [graphic showing a brain with a piece missing]

A teen-brain hasn't finished developing. The underdeveloped area is called the dorsal lateral prefontal cortex. It plays a critical role in decision making, problem solving and understanding future consequences to today's action.

Car crashes injure about 300,000 teens a year and kill 6,000."

Other research shows that if you add alcohol or drugs to that teen brain, the hole really never fills in the same way it would if it had the opportunity to be drug free. Immaturity in the 30s and 40s may be a result of a teen brain that never grew up in a timely fashion. The fabric to stretch over that hole is thin and frayed. Important things that should have been learned at 16 or 17, come much harder if learned later.

The other day I heard that if you can keep your teen from drinking or smoking until they are 20, the chances are good it won't become a problem for them. They'll have the maturity and self discipline to limit their behavior. Sounds like we could save a lot of lives just by raising the legal driving age a year or two. If you can keep a teen-girl from having sex with her boyfriends until she is out of her teens, chances are good she will not end up on welfare because she will probably finish her schooling and not be popping out babies or having abortions.

Just a bit of digression. Who do you suppose it is, social/political conservatives or social/political liberals, who think teens need early freedom to experiment, to "learn to be responsible" by making the wrong choices, who need to find their gender identity by exploring, who don't need filters on computers or ratings on music, or should have alcohol at the parties their parents provide. Who is it that wants to park the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff rather than put up some road blocks and fences along the dangerous curved road to prevent the disasters? Hmmmm. Who seems to have a piece of their brain missing and can't foresee the future consequences of illegal immigration, diversity laws, over regulation of business, special hate speech laws, "taxing the rich" out of business, running out on our allies, and aborting the future generations at about a million a year?

Just wondering, of course. About that missing piece of brain among our legislators and candidates for 2008.

Allstate information on teen drivers