Driving style differences; life or death.

Short description:

Think better courses, defensive driving, license renewals, and public transit. In this essay I discuss all of these alongside my experience with safe driving and car accidents, the steps I have taken to become a safe driver, and ways that other people can improve their driving. In addition to that I cover ways to naturally make the roads safer, that are out of the drivers hands.

Essay:

Ok sure that’s a little extreme for a title, right? But that’s the truth about driving, it’s a life-or-death situation controlled via your and other drivers’ actions. When driving, we’re in control of multi ton vehicles, that’s a dangerous thing to do! Car crashes happen all the time, but we need to find ways to avoid these life-threatening situations.

I’m lucky enough to only have been in one crash, when I was a kid. My mom was driving, and we were on our way out of the grocery store parking lot. It was rush hour, things were busy. My mom wanted to turn into the multi lane road, and she perceived things as clear. As soon as she began to execute this, another woman came flying into the turn lane out of nowhere and hit us in a T-bone fashion. I say flying here because the light was red, and this woman was acting like stopping was old fashioned. The crash was luckily minor, and no one really got hurt, but my mom still was blamed under the law.

It always tweaked me that she was blamed but since she pulled out there was no other choice under the eyes of the law. The whole thing could have been avoided though had everyone been driving safely.

Safe driving requires the driver to pay full attention to the road, no matter what. If I didn’t pay attention when I drove to not only what I was doing, but other drivers, I would have been in several crashes as a driver. But I haven’t been because I follow two main rules when I drive; spatial awareness, and commitment. Those are the rules I learned when my dad taught me how to drive. I got my license at the age of 17, and I’ve been learning to drive since late 15. I’m 19 now and I feel like I’m a better driver than most people I encounter on the road.

Humble of me, right? Well, it’s a feeling many drivers experience, the need to blame others for being poor drivers. But everyone has their faults, even me, I could stand to turn down the music when I drive, and maybe cool my road temper off a bit. But in my multiple years of driving, following my two general rules of thumb has kept me out of trouble.

For starters, spatial awareness is a skill we all have, some people just need to improve upon it. And when driving it is extremely important. This skill means the difference between life and death. And sure, that may seem absurd, of course everyone is paying attention to their surroundings while driving. But spatial awareness is more than just that, more than watching the first foot in front of your car. It means watching out as far as the eye can see, assessing, and using the gathered information to drive accordingly. See a log in the road a mile up? Now you’re prepared in advance to come to a safe stop or change lanes if possible. Someone is swerving in the lane next to you, probably intoxicated? Well now that you’ve noticed you can safely act and get away from them. Spatial awareness can make the difference between just driving or driving safely and defensively.

My other point is commitment. When learning how to drive my dad would yell ‘commit’ at me from the sit next to me when merging, turning, or anything other than driving in a straight line. And I’m glad he did. The road is the one place you CANNOT be indecisive or unsure. Once you’re merging or turning you have to just DO IT. There is no ‘never mind’ or ‘wait’ or any of that. “Don’t make your mistake someone else’s problem” is what my dad says. Miss a turn? Drove past your exit? Running late? Well too bad. That’s right, the road is no place to feel bad for yourself. Suck it up and reroute, tell your boss you’re sorry.

I feel if these general rules of thumb were more often taught then we could avoid crashes, simply because people were learning a couple of skills that make driving safer. If drivers were better educated in general and courses were all taught the same then deaths via car crashes would go down, because crashes would go down. A lack of education leads to a lack of appropriate execution. If we increase education quality then we increase driving quality, and crash amounts go down.

In addition to all this there are a few things that institutions could handle that could make the roads safer. For one, license renewals. Has it been fifty years since you got, your license? Twenty? Ten? Maybe it’s time to go take the driving test again huh? If the US were to implement a ten-year license renewal program, it would force drivers to stay sharp with their skills or get their licenses revoked.

What about public transit? Well, some places in the country have easy access to this. But not all of them do, and this is a giant country. I live in Florida, and we could benefit greatly from public transit along major highways like I-4 or highway 27. ‘But what’s that have to do with safe driving?’ Well, I’m glad you asked. If you add public transit, think trains and subways and local buses, you’d be reducing the amount of car commuting traffic.

The less cars on the road, the less traffic, and the less frustration. And all of that will lessen the number of crashes on the road, because there would be less cars there to get into a crash in the first place.

Overall, there are lots of ways to reduce crashes, but reducing crashes is the main way of lowering the number of deaths that occur from them. We need better driver education, public transit, and license renewals involved with the ideas of individual improvement to have any hope in accomplishing the goal of plummeting crash death rates in the US.