Driver Education Initiative Award Essay

I believe that while some parts of driving school are tedious and repetitive, overall, it

helps shapes us younger drivers into safer and better drivers. My experience with the driver

education through high school was overall very positive. I did the driver education course for

around 6 weeks at my high school. This course was divided into two main components; in class

theory and on-road driving lesson. Obviously, I found the on-road lessons to be the best part, due

to me gaining actual hands-on driving experience. The in-class lessons were a little boring of

course, and it certainly didn’t help that I had my driving course at 6am every day. Although I

found the in-class lessons to be a little slow and struggled to stay awake on occasion, it still

helped me become a better and safer driver. The moist impactful part of the in-class theory was

the videos of accidents showing how many lives were ruined, due to driving under the influence

of drugs and alcohol. While, yes, it is common sense not to drink and drive, but as they say,

common sense is not common practice. These videos really scared me straight and showed me

the reality of how easily one cannot only take a life of an innocent person or one’s own life.

I got my license as soon as I could, to lighten the load of driving on my mother, whether

it be driving my younger brother to school early in the morning, helping on long road trips, or

going to pick up my dog from day care. I tried my best to help in any way possible. I have been

driving for 5 years of driving now and unfortunately; I am not accident free. Thankfully the

accident I had was not caused by my driving under the influence but was caused by me getting

distracted by my music.

On a cold night in late February 2018, I was driving with my younger brother to our

town’s elementary school soccer field in order to pick up some equipment for our indoor

practice. I made a turn down North Broadway in Tarrytown and realized that there was a song

playing that I didn’t like. I reached over and started fidgeting with the radio to find something I

liked more. While trying to change the song, a car stopped short in front of me due to another car

trying to parallel park, and this resulted in me rear ending their car. While the accident only

caused minor damage to each car, but it really frightened me. Since this accident was caused by

my poor judgement, I broke the trust with my mother and lost the use of the car. I realized that

for me to gain back her trust, I needed to figure out why I had the accident, and what I needed to

do to make sure it never happens again.

I thought a lot about what happened, and quite simply I was easily distracted by my

music playing and because of this I put both me and my brothers’ life in danger just to jam out

for a couple minutes. I thought about multiple solutions as to how to make sure that this doesn’t

happen again. The first option I thought of is that I could simply listen to the radio and not to my

playlist. This is an interesting solution since the radio is regulated by the host and if I leave the

music selection responsibility to the host I must remain as just a listener. Another answer is

having my passenger regulate the music for me. This is a better option because it allows me to

have complete handsfree access to my music choices, while still being a hundred percent focused

on driving without looking away even for a second. The final option can be driving without any

music. This final option eliminates any distraction by music entirely. In turn, I could be fully

focused on getting from point A to point B instead of being distracted by what song I am

listening to or what song I want to hear.

For me I realized that the second option is the best for me, I can use my passenger as my

driving secretary or my DJ. In addition, he or she could text somebody if I needed to, change the

music to a song I wanted, or help me navigate where I needed to go. My father uses me as his

technology secretary when he is driving and when we are traveling together, it works very well. I

then asked myself, how does this apply when you don’t have a passenger in the car? I realized

that I needed to have more mental strength and just realize that there is a time and place to play

around with my music and that time or place is certainly NOT while driving. I need to keep in

mind that when I am alone, I am not the DJ but am a simple listener and must be open to hearing

whatever the host wants to play. This may just broaden my listening tastes! Overall, I believe this

minor accident and driving school made me into a better driver today and that the solutions I

came up with are things that I still do, to this day. I plan on continuing to do these things and be

the safest driver I can be.