Driver Education: My Experience

I’ve been driving for almost three years now. That isn’t long at all compared to many adults but I have pretty good experience and I like to think that I’m a good driver. My parents are pretty good drivers too. They each have their own bad habits but observing them and gaining their knowledge has contributed to my ability to drive. Driver education in school was also a big part of learning the rules of the road and understanding the dangers of driving. Driver education is the only way to prevent accidents, especially fatal ones, from occurring. The other way a lesson like that can be grasped is by experience and that is not an option. Driving safety is the most important thing a person can learn as they become an adult.

The most important step in reducing the number of driving-related deaths is by making students fear driving. Not necessarily fear getting into a car, but fear what a seemingly minute and harmless decision can do to their life and the lives of others. One of the things that impacted me the most when I was learning about driving was a video shown to us students at my school about a teenager who was texting while driving and crashed her car. She died. She likely wasn’t staring at her phone the whole time, probably just glancing down to text her friend back. But in the few seconds that she took her eyes off the road, she didn’t know what was going on around her and she crashed. The same impact occurs when teaching about drunk drivers who often end up killing everyone involved in those situations besides themselves because they are so relaxed and unaware. Or when stories of people speeding and driving recklessly and crashing, spinning and flipping, destroying their cars and often killing themselves spread, it encourages people to think about how stupid it is to thoughtlessly put lives at risk, and that saves many lives. Other steps encouraging and reinforcing good habits like wearing a seatbelt, checking blind spots regularly, maintaining safe following distances, and obeying speed limits can also drastically reduce accidents. Police officers are the main enforcers of good driving and should be incentivized to encourage good behavior, not just ticket bad behavior.

My parents each have a specific irresponsibility when it comes to driving. My dad likes to take his eyes off the road to look around. He does it all the time, everywhere he goes. He looks around for a couple of seconds which doesn’t seem like a long time but he’s driving off outdated information every time he looks away. It causes him to drift to the edges of the lane and he often has to brake harder because he wasn’t paying attention when the cars in front of him started to slow down or stop. My dad is also a fast driver and can be aggressive but when he’s paying attention he is good. My mom is also a fast driver. But her irresponsibility is driving while tired. My mom gets tired easily which is normally fine but when she’s driving it’s super dangerous. She gets to the point where her eyes are closed and she’s drifting out of the lane and then suddenly wakes back up and will do that consistently. This was especially scary when I couldn’t drive because I couldn’t swap out with her so she would keep driving. Now I tell her that I will be taking over because it’s just a matter of time before it causes an accident. This only happens on longer drives but it’s still dangerous and I’ve pointed out that it isn’t safe. Saying something to people who drive unsafely and have bad habits is extremely important in reducing accidents which is why I have no problem expressing my concern.

I am guilty of doing dangerous things as well. To be safer, I remind myself that the text I got can always wait and even just reading it can be dangerous. I remind myself that queuing that one song isn’t worth putting lives at risk. One thing I can do to reduce distractions is to put my phone on Do Not Disturb so that I don’t get notifications. Not being able to hear the dings and see the banners on the phone gets rid of the temptation to pick it up. Improvement occurs one step at a time, one person at a time, so if I can prevent an accident by being conscious of the dangers of driving, I will.