Driving Safety Essay

It was a bright, beautiful Ft. Lauderdale day during my May spring break. I was a fifteen-year-old without my license, and I was staying with my grandparents. I decided to accompany my grandmother, a Cuban immigrant, to the grocery store to assist her. We journeyed across the palm-tree ridden city, nicknamed the “Venice of America”, comprised of many busy bridges, intersections, highways, and canals. We beat the tourist traffic, reached the bayside Winn Dixie, and purchased what we needed. We loaded up the car and left. As my abuela exited the parking lot, another woman pulled out of the parking lot across the street with an exit directly across from ours. The woman did not have the right of way and stopped in the middle of the road. I screamed as both cars stopped, bumping heads on. Thankfully, nobody was injured. My grandmother’s vintage Mercedes (which is also both of our middle names) only suffered minor damage to the bumper, an irreplaceable part due to the car’s old age. However, I was left with a sense of anxiety as I began to learn to drive in suburban New York.

This frightening incident opened my eyes to the true frequency of car accidents in our country. It is crucial that driving education is improved, as more precious American lives are being lost per year than in combat, with an average of 34,000 Americans dying per year due to driving-related death. Easily avoidable mistakes due to negligence are killing irreplaceable people. Besides the paramount loss of human life, car accidents damage the property of millions of Americans each year, taking away from the fruits of the hard work and saving that they invested into a vehicle. Driver education is imperative in preventing these negligent mistakes.

In order to reduce the number of deaths related to driving, dangerous laws must be altered and driving instruction must go more in depth. For example, in 22 states it is legal to talk on a phone call or text while driving, such as in Florida. Various states have very relaxed seat-belt laws, such as only front seat passengers being mandated to buckle their seatbelt but not backseat passengers, or adults being mandated to buckle children’s car seats but not their own seatbelts. In some states like Arizona and Nebraska, motorcyclists are not required to wear helmets, which can cause fatal accidents. Catastrophes can be avoided if these laws are made stricter for the safety of the American public. Some states also do not require past DUI offenders to use a breathalyzer before driving. This issue could be somewhat repaired if all states required this, and facial recognition technology was installed along with a breathalyzer to validate the offender’s identity. Also, driving education must place a greater emphasis on the life-saving qualities of seatbelts, turn signals, and helmets. A greater focus can be placed on teen drivers or new drivers and their education by offering more free resources, such as driving instructors, to less economically fortunate teens who may be taught by family members who drive unsafely themselves. Driving education can also place a greater emphasis on how to follow rules as opposed to just what they are, for example, warning not to try to speed through a yellow light before it changes, as opposed to just saying to stop at a red light, and providing examples of other methods of transportation to make it home safely while an individual is under the influence, rather than just stating to not drive drunk. A greater emphasis should be placed on knowing how to operate a car and all of its features properly, such as the gas, defroster, coolant, emergency brakes, etc. There should also be a larger focus on the different types of road signs and understanding them properly, as opposed to a minute number of questions about them on a permit test.

I have seen friends and family members drive irresponsibly, whether they rapidly drive over speed limits, make hasty decisions, turn too wide, stop too short, etc. I have seen this in both young drivers and older drivers; just because somebody has been driving longer does not make them automatically a better driver. I can urge them to become safer on the road by encouraging them to slow down, and lowering distractions by limiting music and conversations in the car. Their deeper focus on the road will help ensure that themselves and the passengers arrive safely, instead of taking their safety for granted and assuming that minor mistakes that can cost lives will be fine. Action can also be taken online, such as through social media initiatives to influence the greater public and petitions to law makers to care about road safety.

About a year after my minor accident with my grandmother as the driver, I received my permit. I took about ten months to acquire my license after getting my permit, taking driving lessons and my required NYS driving course. I was one of the latest of my friends to get my license, due to both my late November birthday and my anxiety to drive that stemmed from my previous accident. Now, I am committed to becoming a better and safer driver by being fully focused when I drive and limiting distractions for myself. I can also make sure that I take the necessary amount of time to warm up my hair and leave for my drive, so that I do not turn to speeding or road rage in order to get to my destination and encourage others to do the same. I can continue to refresh my knowledge of what the road rules and signs are, and brainstorm how I would react to different driving situations and conditions in the future, such as an accident or snow. Most importantly, I can be patient and attentive on the road, giving great attention to details such as the right of way, signals, road signs, and surprise mistakes from other drivers. No matter where I am driving, whether it is to school, cheer practice, to Starbucks with my twin sister, or driving my disabled mother to Church, I commit to being a part of the solution to this perilous issue that gravely affects our country today; it is essential to foster human life when we drive.