Safety Behind The Wheel

It’s a late night out on the road, you and your friends are heading home from a party. One is singing to the radio in the backseat, another is unbuckled dancing around, and a third is up front in the passenger seat next to you using their phone at max brightness. You on the other hand, try your best to keep your eyes on the road, occasionally check your phone and join in on the singing. All seems fine and well, happy even, but for a split second you look down and the happiness empties, so does everyone else’s. The next day a news report flashes across the screen county wide, “4 teenagers killed in a car crash”.

We often don’t think something like that can happen to us, or at least, we’re responsible enough to make it not happen. Though the truth is we’re all susceptible to car crashes and they can happen at any moment, whether it’s from your actions or others. The best thing we can do is to prepare ourselves, through education and practicing safety while in a vehicle. Car crashes, annually kill over 34,000 people a year so how do we stop these deaths?

The main way to start reducing these deaths is to start practicing behind the wheel safety no matter who you are. One of the safety measures you can take is wearing a seat-belt when driving or even as a passenger. The reasoning being, as shown from studies conducted by NHTSA, 26,325 people were killed in car crashes in 2021 with 50% of them being preventable if only they were wearing a seat-belt. On average wearing a seat-belt is estimated to reduce both your fatal injury and critical injury risk by 50%. Both statistics show that just a simple application of safety could take that number of 34,000 people down to 17,000. To cut that number further though we must educate people on driving safely.

So, what is the importance of driver education? It’s the foundation of how we drive in society and gives access to those who want to drive. With education, people learn how to drive better on the road and in turn prevent more accidents. A University of Nebraska – Lincoln study showed that roughly 13% of people who didn’t go through driving education were involved in a car crash compared to the roughly 11% who were educated. Which is only a 2% difference but that 2% means an extra 340 lives out of the 17,000 are saved.

Personally, from others, I know that these precautions do help. Many years ago, when I was still in elementary school it was a rainy day, and I hadn’t gotten out of school yet. I took the bus home and didn’t see my mom’s jeep in the driveway which was odd because usually she’s home when I got back. When I walked in, I found out she was still home, but I also found out that the Jeep was totaled, and she looked visibly shaken but as a kid I never paid much mind. A few years after I come to find out on her way home, she had been in an accident, the roads were slippery, and the jeep happened to slide just a little to the side and hit a mailbox which caused the jeep to turn and start flipping on its side down the road. Thankfully, the jeep had a strong roll cage, and wouldn’t you know it my mom had a seat-belt on. She even told me it saved her life because the whole time it kept her sitting tight in her seat even as pieces of debris flew around her. She came out of the accident unharmed even if a bit dazed, which means without seat-belts I may have lost my mom when I was young, which would’ve made life much harder growing up.

Considering everything I’ve seen and heard, it often makes me question my own habits now that I’m on my provisional license, what I could be doing differently to keep myself safe. I believe one of the best things I could be doing, especially with still being in high school and going off to college soon is to get more sleep and fix my sleep schedule. Often, I find myself staying up late even when I have school and work the next day, meaning throughout the day, I’m tired. Once school ends, I usually head straight to work and when I’m in the driver’s seat I’m less aware than what I would be otherwise because of how tired I am. It scares me too because I’ll have my dad in the passenger seat and I don’t want him to be harmed by my actions, though I’m also scared to say anything and switch seats because I want to make a good impression on my driving skills.

Driving is a great ability to have, it can help us get from A to B quickly and gives people countless job opportunities. Though not everyone practices safe driving and because of that many people die each year from car accidents. If we better teach people what to do such as wearing seat-belts, proper driving etiquette, and even personal habits we can reduces the amount of people injured and killed every year. Even for myself, if I learn new personal habits I can reduce my risk of being involved in an accident and injuring someone close to me or someone else.