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2024 Driver Education Round 3 – Confidence Can Kill

Name: Sophie Morton
From: Atlantic Beach, Florida
Votes: 0

Confidence Can Kill

It was a bright summer day, and I was heading over the bridge to drop one of my friends off at home. Suddenly, my car’s alarm sounded, indicating my tailgate was open. Normally, this would not be a cause of panic but on this day, I had towels in my trunk. I immediately envisioned these towels flying out of my car, landing on another car’s windshield, and causing a huge pile up on the Atlantic Bridge- or worse- a pileup UNDER the bridge in the water below.

Due to this horrific image, I stopped thinking rationally and turned as fast as I could to make it into the last parking lot before crossing the bridge ahead. In my state of shock I turned, going 45 miles per hour, without touching the brake pedal. My turn was wide, and I missed the road, running into the grass and totaling my car headfirst into a tree. The air bags deployed, and the car filled with smoke.

The rest of the day was a total blur of crying and complete shame. I will never forget the call the next day from the autobody shop, asking if the passengers in the car were still alive, since the crash was so bad that the two of us should have been killed. I had been overconfident in my amateur driving skills and experiences, and reacted poorly to the situation.

Ever since this experience, my outlook on driving has completely shifted. I was irresponsible and acted based on anxiety, instead of rational, calm thinking. As a result, I came up with a plan of how I could become a safer driver:

  1. Never agree to drive people that will distract you from focusing on the road.

  2. Music should not be turned louder than your surroundings. If you cannot hear the cars around you, how can you ensure safety?

  3. Keep your phone out of sight! You really can’t have eyes on the road and your device- no matter how hard you try.

  4. In extreme driving situations, staying calm is necessary, no matter how scared you might be. You cannot act with rational thinking under a lot of stress.

  5. Never ever agree to get in a car whose driver is under ANY sort of influence. No matter how peer pressured you may feel or how short the drive is.

Even though some of my personal rules may seem like common knowledge, facts repeated over and over to teenagers until it feels like it’s been branded onto our brains, it is surprising how quickly one can stray from these rules when put in an extreme or unexpected situation. This is why driving related death rates are so high. We all have had this thought at least once: “Just once won’t hurt, I will be extra cautious.”

No matter if it’s one text sent on the road, one notch higher in volume of the radio, one obnoxious passenger, or one drink before driving. The problem is, just once is enough to cause an accident. Just once is enough to cause a pattern of invincibility. To counteract this, I would like to focus on two ways I think our society could improve road and diving safety: education tactics and technology.

Reducing driving related deaths is quite simple. The best way we can do this is through driver education. Without this platform, many would have no way of learning how to drive or knowing the rules of the road. However, even with drivers’ ed courses now, we are still having high deaths and accident rates. We need to improve our responsibility as a society. A first step toward success would be to prolong the lengths and content of drivers ed courses. By allowing more individual attention, students’ driving abilities will skyrocket and confidence on the road will grow. Furthermore, if drivers’ education included real world simulation like music levels, peer pressure, as well as emergency simulations, students would become better prepared for the realities of driving. In all honesty, I think acquiring a license is too easy. As new drivers, we barely know road rules and only need 50 hours of driving experience to acquire a license. Students need to be proficient in driving and prove they are responsible enough to take on the roads without this recklessness.

Furthermore, it is important to note that another problem is human morality. We all have moments of weakness. We get distracted, act on impulse, and make thoughtless decisions. This is where technology comes in. Through innovation we can ensure road safety. For example, if technology could be devised that keeps phones out of drivers’ hands and sight via lock ups and silencing until the destination is reached, this would result in fewer texting and driving issues. If we had built in car breathalyzers to prevent drinking and driving, we would have less DWIs and DUIs. Engineers could go as far as to make cars not start until proper safety precautions are addressed and in place. These are just two small examples! We are in the age of technology, and simple technological advances are needed to protect our roads and our people.

Therefore, I feel that the best way to increase road safety is to better educate our drivers by preparing them not just for basic driving skills but also the experiences and situations a driver might face, and by increasing car safety technology to improve safety when a driver’s responsibility fails them.