Safe Driving starts with us

The importance of safe driving is now clear to me more than ever. I have acquired my driving permit and have started to take to the road, and it’s terrifying. Even though the road is empty and wide, meaning no objects to hit and no reason to get too close to the cars on either side of the street, I still sit in the driver’s seat in a constant state of fear as I remove my foot from the break and allow the car to move in motion. Twenty miles per hour feels too fast when I am the one driving, thirty feels unspeakable as I worry I will crash. Thankfully I have my mom to guide me, either through her screaming at me to break, or her judgy but helpful thoughts on my turns. I feel like with my learning beside her, I might feel safe on the road one day. But I know she can’t teach me everything, so it’s our plan to enroll in a drivers ed class. Because learning how to drive is like any study, you must seek out multiple teachers to truly learn the entirety of the craft.

My fears of driving are not illogical. I was in a car crash once when I was young. Me and my sister were in Arizona, as we were visiting our parents who were working on the Super Bowl HalfTime Show. My Nonna was the one watching us that year, and let me tell you my Nonna is one strong woman. She just happens to be stuck in an old lady’s body. Her mind was still as sharp as ever, and she was and still is extremely competent. But on our way to the stadium, in the little white rental car we had just taken out from the dealer, we ended up hitting the car in front of us as my grandmother pulled out into the intersection. For a moment we didn’t know what happened. We jostled forward and the airbags inflated. The white powder, used to keep the bags fresh and ready to inflate, filled the air making it appear to be smoke. My sister could not have been more than 5 and I, more than 9 as we sat and tried to talk to my Grandmother who was just as frazzled as we were. I don’t remember much, but I know we didn’t call the police, someone else did. I know it took a while to get my Grandmother out of her car seat, and even with the airbags, my Nonna still had bruises and blood trickling from her arms, the origin still being unknown. The car we had hit had been able to pull over to the side, and everyone seemed to conjugate there. My parents arrived and whisked us away, allowing our grandmother to sort things out with the police. Years later I asked my Nonna about that day. What had happened afterwards, and if anyone got in trouble. She confessed that in the heat of the moment she had taken the blame, resulting in court hearings in which she paid for the damages to the other car and the rental car we had been in. Yet now she believes she was wrong, as no car should have been pulling out from that side of the intersection at the time. Yes, her car was the one who had hit the other car, but looking back she couldn’t help but remember that car speeding through. If that car had not sped up the crash would not have happened, and my grandmother would not have taken the fall.

On the contrary to my careful grandmother who happened to get into a crash, my father is a reckless driver. It depends on the situation why, but there are times where he has been upset with me or my sister, and purposely sped up on a crowded road to scare us. Purposely muttering about hitting cars, and getting right on the back bumper of the car ahead of us. On other occasions he is annoyed with another driver and purposely cuts them off or purposely swivels around them to annoy them. He is a victim of allowing his anger to take hold of him on the road, when it isn’t just his own body he yields, but a massive contraption of metal. He drives well, when he decides to, and I imagine in a fantasy imagery situation of the apocalypse, he could speed through traffic and get us to safety with minimal slowdowns(hitting other cars) all with action packed turns and explosions in the backround, but the apocalypse has not happened yet, and his constant ignoring of road rules, and speeding over the speed limit, does not help anyone. It just makes the road more dangerous than it is.

Car crashes are a constant, and they are often fostered by road rage. People’s own inability to drive correctly, which then angers other drivers, which then leads to impulsive rage based decisions that ends in injury or death. Common ignorance of road rules also leads to such accidents, as one of the most common reasons for a car crash is that of people speeding up at a yellow light, instead of slowing down. Normally resulting in the car racing into an intersection in which they crash into the oncoming traffic that the light was trying to prevent.

Everything goes back to the education of those on the road. If people are better taught the rules and regulations that come with driving, and they are better enforced throughout the driver’s driving experience, they are more likely to adhere to them. If people are being better drivers on the road, it can only snowball from there. Less road rage accidents would happen, because there is less road rage to have. If people know the laws and regulations, and are following them, then those rules and regulations will do their jobs of keeping drivers and passengers safe on their travels. We need more consistent education in all fifty states when it comes to driving and it starts with us. If our state or county does not have adequate laws and rules of drivers education, then we must make sure that we are searching for it, and seeking it out.

We can make the roads safer, one safe driver at a time.