The Importance of Driving Education

I see the importance of driving education is to better prepare yourself to be a licensed driver, to be a safety to you and to others on the road, have real life experiences and to teach you things you wouldn’t normally know.

I believe everyone would benefit from driving education since we’d be coming from a familiar place about driving and learning every rule of the road. I’d naturally assume everyone who drives a vehicle would want that, but somehow we still end up with around 34,000 deaths a year from driving. Of that amount 25-50% of these accidents are caused by driving under the influence, speeding, aggressive driving, and weather related negligence.

I have only had a few close encounters when driving, but fortunately it never resulted in an accident. I have however seen my family get hurt because people weren’t educated on basic driving knowledge. The feeling you get when you hear, “Your Dad got into a car crash” is truly a heart stopper. My mind raced and my heart sank when I heard that not only my Dad got into an accident, but also my Mom. Fortunately they were both okay but I’ll never forget the feeling I felt after seeing the damage to both my parents cars. That incident made me realize that driving can be more dangerous than it seems, and encourages me to practice and learn driving responsibly.

One thing I believe that can make everyone better drivers is teaching more than just the basics. For example the mental aspect to driving not only involves your body, but also your mind which needs to be fully alert and prepared. Other examples include general patience, how to go with the flow of traffic, how to plan driving ahead and how to be more aware of your environment. Patience would be an amazing game changer in driving, since a large amount of deaths are caused by things such as reckless driving, improper turning, unsafe lane changes and running red lights. Patience would help lower these actions by letting the driver know to follow the rules of the road even during more challenging times and how to be the bigger person. Going with the flow of traffic is not something people would think about automatically, but theoretically if there are a large amount of people going a certain speed, it’d be better to stay with them than fall behind and potentially cause another driver to crash into you or try to maneuver around you.

I feel like a lot of people struggle when planning to drive. As tons of driving deaths are caused by distracted driving, speeding, reckless driving, drowsy driving, unsafe lane changes, night driving, etc. These are all big factors in whether or not you’re a safe driver, and planning ahead can prevent a lot, if not all, of these issues. If you plan ahead it will allow you to get the required sleep you need for long drives. You could even grab a friend to take shifts in driving incase of drowsiness. In addition, not having to stress about getting to your destination on time can 100% prevent people from disobeying the laws and taking their time with driving. it would make everyone involved safer and a lot happier.

It’s sad to say but I think enforcing drivers to be more aware of their surroundings would be a huge help. it’s a given when you’re practicing driving to be aware of your surroundings but yet so many people fail to do so and Cause car crashes, running lights and signs, ignoring road hazards and weather issues, the list goes on. Acknowledging these issues would benefit everyone tremendously. A way to enforce this would be turning off your phone while driving, wearing sunglasses if it’s bright out, high beams at night and the basics of environmental awareness that everyone should be doing but fail to do.

In conclusion, writing this essay and researching this topic has made me realize and rethink my way of driving. I’m still learning, but I know for the future I should be doing all of this 10 fold! I know driver education teaches you everything you need to know to drive a car, but understanding how certain situations could potentially play out can mold myself into a better driver. It will help me prepare myself to be the better driver I wrote about and to set an example to all the people in my life about what it means to be a good driver.