Putting a Stop to Reckless Driving

Driving is an essential part of American life, and receiving your driver’s license is the equivalent to a rite of passage here. However, with this new rite of passage comes new problems, the biggest being an increase in the number of deaths related to driving. This epidemic is so bad, it’s become one of the leading reasons for death among teens. In response to this epidemic, America has put in some prevention to hopefully reduce the death percentage. Some of these prevention measures are an increase in requirements to attain a license, improvement in driver training curriculum, and more outreach to kids about driver safety.

Driving training’s importance is to teach new drivers the rules and regulations of the road. To provide practice with driving in a control environment. It teaches the dangers of driving to help prevent possible accidents. A change in the curriculum also allows it to install a little fear to make people realize the consequences of improper driving. They do this by showing documents such as Red Pavement, which show graphic effects of driving related deaths. It’s something that sticks with young drivers, it especially stuck with me. With proper training and a little fear it should help reduce driving related deaths, as new drivers are now properly educated on the consequences of reckless driving.

Not to mention, there has been an increase in the regulations to attain a driver’s license. For starters, you have to take two separate training courses each three weeks long, unless you are close to 18 in which case you only have to take one. In-between the two training courses you have to have 50 hours of driving in, as well as the 6 hours of instructor driving in each class. All these hours are in a controlled environment with an adult, to get adolescents used to driving on all sorts of roads and scenarios.

There are many steps one can take to prevent deaths related to driving. One of the easiest ways to prevent a death by driving is to make sure you’re always sober when you drive. Despite this being a simple task, many people do not follow it. In fact drunk driving is the number one cause for car crashes. Following the idea of being mentally present when you drive, another good tip to have is to limit or get rid of all the distractions in your car entirely. One of the biggest distractions you can eliminate is the use of your phone while driving. This is because if an accident is caused by a drunk driver, then it’s probably caused by someone being on their phones. There are rules in place against it yet people still fall for the same stuff. When you use your phone, even just to listen to music, or hands free calling, your attention is still pulled away from the road, and all it takes is a split second of a light changing or someone turning too fast for you to end up in a car crash. Another thing that can help is just catching a few extra hours of sleep. I know it seems weird but science shows your cognitive function works better with proper amounts of sleep, and those quick reflexes are never more important than when you drive. Finally, the simplest tip I can give is to always come to a complete stop when you drive. Whether it is for a red light or a standard stop sign. An extra second of speed isn’t worth the chance of a crash. Especially running red lights, you can’t always count on your fellow driver to have quick enough reflexes to brake, or that they aren’t speeding as well. Most crashes tend to happen around stop points, so it is always safer to just wait and come to a complete stop.

I wish more people knew these tips because, while I have never personally been in a car accident, my best friend was hit and killed by a car two years ago. He was 16 years old, and was just walking home at night when some dude ran a red light and hit him. It was a very traumatic experience for myself and those who knew him. It also left an impact on how we view cars and road safety. For me personally, I was left with a fear of driving as this happened a month before I took drivers training, and while I completed the course, It took me until a few months ago to start driving and working on getting my hours. Even now, as I work on getting my hours, I’m still super vigilant about my surroundings when I drive, and tend to follow every rule in the book, even the ones most people choose not to. It’s also hard as I see many people around me breaking the most basic of driving rules such as using turn signals or speeding. It hurts me to see them drive so recklessly and I always correct them but it tends to fall on deaf ears. It’s like no one cares or sees the gravity of driving recklessly, and the horrible consequences that can come from it. As someone who’s firsthand seen the consequences of that kind of driving, it baffles me how people can be so carelessly reckless.

I just hope with the new regulations, and enough outreach with these tips we can curb the deaths caused by reckless driving. No one should risk their life just to get to a destination a few minutes faster. No mother deserves to bury her 16 year old son just because some dude ran a red light. Nothing is more important than your life and those around you, when you are driving. Nothing.