Society generally views a teenager passing his road test as the ultimate rite of pas­sage of adolescence. He no longer has to worry about be­ing restricted by his parents’ agenda when it comes to pri­oritizing his own needs. Many parents get nervous at the thought of their children driv­ing on dangerous roads filled with careless drivers.

My parents have told me time and again that it’s not my driving that they’re concerned about, but rather it’s the fact that I’m driving in hazardous conditions. Before I started driving, I would normally re­spond to their anxiety with an eye roll; however, after see­ing many dangers on the road from a driver’s perspective, I realized that my parents could not have been more correct.

Oddly enough, I made this realization as my mom was driving me to school one morning. We turned onto Bev­erly Avenue, which intersects Cartwright Boulevard. As we got closer to the stop sign at the intersection, I started to panic as I imagined all the accidents that could have oc­curred.

The traffic from Cart­wright never stops because there is no stop sign at its in­tersection with Beverly. How­ever, Beverly does have a stop sign perpendicular to Cart­wright, which means that driv­ers on Beverly have to wait for quite some time before it is safe for them to pass the in­tersection. I always think that this problem could be solved if a stop sign were placed on Cartwright at this intersection.

Evidently, I am not the only one in a rush to get to school, as there are many im­patient drivers who try to cross Cartwright too quickly and put themselves at increased risk of collision. It’s not only the passengers in the cars who are prone to injury but also the pe­destrians on the street.

“I walk by [the intersec­tion] every day,” junior Eric Hoffman said. “It’s very un­safe because drivers do speed down this road and do not look for people walking. There ab­solutely needs to be a stop sign.”

Getting a stop sign in­stalled is no easy feat. Gen­erally, in order to get a new sign approved, the organizer must get a certain number of co-sponsors on a petition from fellow residents. Addition­ally, the organizer of the drive would need to present the case at a town hall or city coun­cil meeting and would also need to lobby officials such as senators and assemblymen.This whole process would undoubtedly take several months. However, there are some short-term solutions for this problem. Students could perhaps find alternate ways of getting to school to avoid the dangerous intersection alto­gether.

“Some people come the same way to school every day. If people find alternative routes to school, it would lighten the [traffic on] the road,” said Dean Patrick Howard. He also suggested additional routes, such as driving along Merrick Road and going through the Roslyn Savings Bank park­ing lot, so one would be driv­ing directly on Cartwright and could turn onto Jones Street with more ease.

After talking to Mr. Howard, I realized that it is not possible to control traf­fic completely. This problem only occurs in the morning when students need to get to school. During the summer, however, the traffic in this area is significantly reduced, but it is still important that a stop sign be installed because even one accident is one too many. Until then, students must take matters into their own hands by using different routes to get to school and by remaining pa­tient and vigilant when cross­ing this intersection.