The Tree meeting

The importance of driver education is very important because it helps people to understand how to handle a car in uncertain and unknown situations. When you know how to handle your Car while driving in snow, rain or on gravel you can prevent most of the crashes you will have, but how can you train for it?

I think it is very important to know how to handle a car and I also would say that if you go to Drivers Education you should pay attention because at one point in time you will need to know what they talked about and you need to do it. Also when you take drivers education you should learn how to drive during rain, snow or dust. There are only a few states where you can train for all three of those without driving for a long time to a certain place. But for example you can learn how to drive during rain pretty easily, there are places, only for driver’s education, there is a street which is larger than a normal one and they can simulate aquaplaning (when the car is sliding because of the water on the road). In my opinion it should be mandatory to do a couple of those until you know what to do in a situation like that so it isn’t new to a person who got that in real life. Something that should also change is the number of hours you need to take for driver’s education, when you are above the age of 18 in Idaho you don’t need to take any more hours and basically get your license without training. In Germany for example you need to take at least 30 hours of driving within six months. And you get different situations to learn to drive in, during darkness, in the City and on the Highway/Interstate. Of Course it is more expensive but also much safer and the time you learned all of that a person can drive safely on the streets and knows how to behave in certain situations. An Idea every Country should try would be that everyone would need to go to a driver’s test every five to ten years, just to show that you aren’t a hazard for other people. All of those steps reduce deaths during driving. Of course not all of them but a few and those few are very important.

In the Headline it says Tree meeting, what is that about? A couple weeks ago I was driving around with a friend, He told me later he got his license only a couple days before that incident. We drove around the Town and we decided later in the afternoon to drive up to the Forest where we would stay for a little while. As we drove up there it started to rain and he was driving way too fast. He lost control over the car as we drove out of a very sharp corner. He was panican and just pushed the Gas paddle and stirred like crazy right and left. A few seconds later we hit a couple of trees and the car stopped.

How could he have prevented that? First of all, he should have paid attention during driver’s education class and common sense should have told him not to go full throttle into a 90 degree corner or in general when it’s raining. Something that could have helped him would have been when driver education is a little bit harder and takes a few more hours until you get a license. So you need to drive in different situations like rain or darkness and you need to prove that you can do that and not just get a license handed. An Idea would also be, after a crash the person who was driving (even if it wasn’t their fault) they would need to take a form of advanced drivers education. During those hours they should learn generally how to handle a situation like the one where they crashed and also how to handle simulare or totally different situations. Important is that the person who is taking that should not pay for it, otherwise a lot of people would show up. Insurance or the Government should pay for that extra training.

I think that I can only be a better driver when I do some of those special driving tests every few years and when I am patient while driving and look out for others, so when they are making a mistake and I’m right behind or next to them, that I don’t crash into them and make a little bit of space between me and them.