In the Driver’s Seat

According to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety in the latest year of 2021, there were a total of 42,939 people who died due to motor vehicles. Driving is a big responsibility, it could cause injuries, accidents, and sometimes death. Driver education is very important because it can reduce the number of deaths resulting from driving. Being a responsible driver can save your life, but save thousands of others’ lives too. It is very important for everyone but most importantly teens and new drivers who don´t have a lot of experience behind the wheel.

I´ve enter the age where young adults want to work and hang out with friends without having our parent drive us around. As I am ready to take my permit test, I though of some issues while finishing the online course. One of them being, why do I need to wait days in order to get an answer from a teacher? I came up with an idea to encourage High schools to make Driver Education a required class. I know students would ask themselves ´´Who doesn’t know how to drive´´ However, what students do not understand is that driving is not just being able to control the steering wheel in order to not crash with others. But, to understand the signs, responsibilities, and the consequences of their actions while driving. Another recommendation I have from a point of view as a friend, if I see that my friend is not capable or reliable to drive after a hang out I could encourage and convince them to take an Uber, taxi, or public transportation preventing a death from both sides.

Fortuitously, I have not been with someone that drives irresponsibly. Although I have not been with someone who drives irresponsibly, I have known of people who have lost loved ones because of irresponsible people. I have heard and seen the suffering of a person knowing that someone who they loved and cared for has passed away due to people’s actions and conditions while driving. My mother and I have many things in common, one of them being the way we think. From my experience, my mother always drives with caution. She wants the other families and hers to get home safely. She is always attentive on the road, this is why when I go out with my mother to any place, she is always telling me about some errors people make while driving. That’s why every time I have the opportunity to practice my driving, I leave everything aside to only focus on what is most important. Doing this repetition now will make a habit and routine for the future, reminding me of all the accidents caused by insufficient driving education.

One of the steps I take to improve my driving is to put everything aside to concentrate, as I said in my previous paragraph. Aside from doing that, I have a few steps I take before I start driving. For example, checking if the car is in perfect condition to drive. Majority of the people do not inspect their cars to see if it has any defects since the last time they used it. Some people only think that the cause of a car accident is caused by a person, but most of the time it has to do with a failure in the brakes. Another possible reason that causes car accidents is distractions. There are several types of distractions, some of them being cell phones, the people you are in the car with and last but not the least the condition in which you drive. Cell phones are a distraction from anything you do if you don’t know how to prioritize things. There is no denying that cell phones are very important today, but while driving they are a danger. Passengers are also a distraction, they may think that just by talking and showing you things on their phones they cannot cause an accident because you are not holding it. But just by having a conversation even if you are not part of it, it can cause something tragic. And finally, the condition in which you drive is very important too. An example of this case could be when you did not sleep the 7 to 9 hours that the body needs to rest. This can cause you to close your eyes for a second while driving without knowing what could happen in those seconds. To sum it all, driver education can prevent tragedies.