Be Someone Else’s Eyes

Despite how frequently almost everyone drives, it is important to remember how dangerous it can really be. All it takes for someone to get injured, suffer thousands of dollars in various fees, or even be fatally wounded is just three seconds of negligence. While getting from one place to another in a timely manner is still important, what good is going faster if you don’t end up making it to your destination?

The first step in keeping wrecks to a minimum is knowing how dangerous driving can be. Even if totally sober, just being distracted for a brief period could result in the loss of life. Having gotten my own driver’s license not too long ago, I felt as though there were some flaws in the driver’s education courses here in Louisiana. It was about a week long and lasted several hours per day, with most of that time spent watching videos about the dangers of driving. While that sounds good (and it is), I feel there is one important thing they did not put enough emphasis on. Drivers must know how to remain vigilant for drivers who are not paying attention. This brings up the idea of being “someone else’s eyes.” If they cannot pay attention enough to be safe and considerate towards others on the road, then the only other way to prevent accidents is for others to essentially be paying attention for them. During my first actual hands-on driving practice, I was on a relatively busy street and I almost had a collision with a driver who was trying to pull out into the road in front of me while not paying enough attention. However, because I was paying attention, I was able to slow down enough that their recklessness was without consequence. While yes, no driver should be so absent-minded in the first place, this still highlights how at least one driver being focused can prevent a wreck.

To this extent, I believe driver’s ed courses should consider adding more material related to being wary of other drivers. Not only that, but driver’s ed courses need to be stricter in the first place. Maybe I was already just intelligent when it comes to driving and its rules, but none of the tests and quizzes given to my class were difficult and they even allowed multiple re-attempts without requiring revisitation of the material. Oftentimes, students in my class would just take the test once to see all of the right answers, then take it again to get them all right without having to make sure they learned the actual material. I feel like making the written tests and quizzes harder, even to a perhaps intentionally too difficult level, would make it so that the majority of students will have to revisit what was learned in class and therefore lead to a better understanding of road safety and laws. Also, they need to switch strictly to paper tests and quizzes instead of online sites that will show students what the correct answer was after they answered incorrectly.

Back on the topic of being someone else’s eyes, it is worth noting my own experience with this concept and how it came to be in the first place. My first and only to-date car accident was almost exactly a year ago. What had happened was that I was stopped at a four way stop, with no other cars present except one vehicle behind me and one on the right. This vehicle on the right was still quite a ways away from the intersection, about three or four seconds away from stopping where they were meant to. Knowing the rules of the road, I proceeded after coming to a full stop since I was the first (and only) one to arrive at the intersection. Unfortunately, the car on my right never slowed down and hit my front right with their front left. As a result, my car was totaled and my left knee was completely out of its socket but luckily still attached. Of course, this accident was in no way my fault, but ever since then I have always waited if there was a car that was close to approaching the intersection to make sure that they stop before I proceed. This is where I first developed my idea of being someone else’s eyes, because you can never expect a person to always be paying attention and doing what they are supposed to at any given time.

This is why I believe embracing this concept of watching for others’ failure to heed can absolutely reduce the number of injuries and deaths caused every year by reckless driving. Just remember to still pay attention to what you are doing at any given time as well.