Dangers of Driving

Driving is one of the most dangerous actions anyone can do on a daily basis. There are far more car related deaths daily than any shootings in America, often caused by a lack of driver safety and the high amounts of accidents. Many of these deaths occur due to a string of negligence, usually something small like missing a road sign or trying to turn at a red light too quickly. However, others can occur due to drivers ignoring important rules of the road or simply being uneducated in them. Drivers Education needs to gain more focus so that those behind the wheel know what actions to take to be as safe as possible for the people around them, as well as knowing how to avoid the dangerous actions of other drivers.

One of the ways that Drivers Education can reduce the amount of accidents is by informing future or current drivers on what actions they need to take in order to remain safe and obey the rules of the road. The entire point of Drivers Education is to help aspiring drivers to know all the rules of the road, as well as what to pay attention to both in and out of the car in order to remain safe. For Instance, an online drivers education course lists out everything that a driver needs to understand while driving on the road which includes any and all traffic laws. These courses list out small things like how to prepare for the drive and how to follow basic laws, to things like how to avoid DUI through legal methods so that you don’t endanger the lives of others on the road. Drivers Education courses help to improve road safety by listing out everything a driver needs to understand to be safe on the road while also teaching them how to follow these rules for everyone’s safety.

Similarly, the courses also point out how to be a defensive driver. The courses list out the best methods to avoid skidding off the road ,as well as how to understand when the drivers around you aren’t being safe. For example,  an online drivers ed helped me to understand that based on how the cars around me were moving I could tell who was likely drunk or distracted which would prevent me from being injured when they potentially did something stupid. Likewise, the course taught me how to turn my car when the road was frozen or soaking wet so that I didn’t cause a wreck. Drivers Education helps us become better drivers by showing us how to deal with scenarios where your driving environment is dangerous, be it other drivers or poor weather.

However, Drivers Education is only the first step in the quest to ensure road safety. To continue this goal, we also need to ensure that drivers understand the magnitude of what they get themselves into on a daily basis and how their actions can affect everyone. First of all, we need to highlight the raw power of a car and the threat it provides to everyone. Cars can weigh over 4,000 pounds and can go over 100 miles per hour. That kind of speed and weight makes cars deadlier than any bullet, with the ability to cause damage to far more people than a single gun. Just because you are in a car doesn’t mean you are safe either, as the sides of cars aren’t built to withstand that much potential force and every crash could be fatal. Next, we need to reinforce how small car habits can lead to accidents all the time. Distracted driving is a serious killer as people can look away for just a second for an alert on their phone or to talk to a friend, and in doing so they risk crashing every single time. People need to understand that once you are in the car, you are only truly safe when your focus is on the road and the road alone. The last thing we need to drill into peoples heads is that if you have had enough alcohol to feel “a little loopy”, then you should play it safe and get a friend to drive you home. No one wants to cause any harm as a drunk driver, but they need to know that it is their responsibility to avoid driving until they are lucid. Every time someone dies because a drunk driver caused an accident, it is an accident. The driver likely didn’t consciously have too much alcohol, but that’s only because they don’t know when to quit. If we can reinforce the magnitude of a car’s power, and the dangers of drinking and distracted driving; then we can ensure that more drivers are guilted into behaving responsibly.

I know that people will think that we need to reinforce and strengthen driving laws and driver accountability, and they are right to an extent. We need to ensure that road laws are enforced so that there are consequences for being an unsafe driver, which will help road safety. However, road laws are already heavily enforced as it is. No matter how important the laws are, people are still going to find ways to break them even by accident. Should we ensure that people are psychologically conditioned to understand the consequences of their actions on the road, and can help them be safer.

This doesn’t just apply to everyone around me, this applies to myself as well. While I have never been in a crash or come close to one, the fear of it always weighs on my mind. So I will continue to try to make sure I am safer on the road so that I don’t contribute to the decline in road safety. I constantly try to make sure I am going over the rules of the road, avoid making decisions that I deem even kind of risky and even completely change how I view my driving methods whenever I encounter a close call. Road safety is important and I don’t want to hurt anyone, and neither does anyone I know. The only time I have ever seen someone in my family do something dangerous is when I took a right turn and I went too far to the left of my lane and almost got hit. The experience still haunts me as I could have died, so I always try to avoid any dangerous situation even when it is inconvenient for myself and others. Even a new driver like myself can make mistakes, so it is always important that we all focus on being as safe of drivers as we can be.