The Reducing Death Rates and Ensuring Safety in the Traffic World: The Key Element That Is Driver Education

For many Americans, the automobile represents freedom and self-expression. But for all too many, the automobile has become a vehicle of death. Car accidents remain the leading cause of death in the United States and claim thousands of lives every year. This is happening despite the fact that technology has made our vehicles much safer, and that traffic laws have evolved. Still, it seems we cannot escape the accidents, the insurance claims, and too often the funereal processions that follow. Driver education in high schools and private schools is essential in trying to reduce the fatalities because it teaches a young person the grave consequences of certain risky behaviors that one could be inclined to do and that too often lead to accidents and deaths.

I have seen up close how DUI can tear people’s lives apart, and I have buried too many friends and family members because of foolishness behind the wheel. So, when I write the following words, I do so with deep gratitude for the folks who spent time with my loved ones and me to teach us how to be safe drivers. You can’t put a price on that, and it isn’t something that should go away anytime soon. Should we really take the roads in our cars if there are just as many chances to get killed as there are to get killed in a shooting?

The Role of Driver Education in Reducing Traffic Deaths

Driver education is the basis upon which safe driving is built. It is a foundation that too many young drivers skip. For my generation, it was commonplace to have taken a driver education course within the first year or two after getting a learner’s permit. For my parents’ generation, it was very common, too. That is not the case for all young people today. Increasingly, young people are entering the world of driving without having taken a driver education course, and oddly enough, there are some states that still do not require it. That seems like a very risky business model to me, with a model of generating traffic deaths by not instilling the necessary foundation of safe driving in millions of young people.

Teaching a driver about the dangers of driving while impaired or distracted can significantly influence them to make better choices when they are tempted to do otherwise—like texting while driving or driving after drinking. Numerous studies have shown that drivers who have completed formal driver education programs have far fewer accidents and engage in much less hazardous driving than those who have not. This is even more pronounced when we look at the group that is most susceptible to these kinds of behaviors: young people. For them, education can play an extremely vital role in highway safety.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the number one way that teenagers die is in motor vehicle crashes. Teens are the most likely group of drivers to be involved in such things as, well, prevarication behind the wheel. They’re also the most likely to die if such a thing were to happen. Teaching the young kinds to not use phone, to use the seatbelt, and to strive for (and, more importantly, maintain) high levels of decorum can help with reducing the number of deaths from the aforementioned cause.

Reducing roadway fatalities requires a multi-pronged approach. Educating drivers on the ins and outs of safe driving is a must. But we also need to implement other measures that ensure the driving environment is as safe as it can be.

More Rigorous Enforcement of DUI Laws

Car accidents are a leading cause of death, and far too many are caused by drivers who are impaired by alcohol. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, estimating the toll taken by such impaired driver fatalities, has projected that nearly 30 people lose their lives each day in U.S. car wrecks involving an impaired driver. The NHTSA has also designated tougher enforcement as one of the main ways to bring down that appallingly high number, along with random sobriety checkpoints and other “strong deterrents.”

My personal life has seen the terrible effects of DUI. A few years ago, I lost a family friend to an accident involving a driver who was under the influence of alcohol. My family and I were devastated. The victim’s family suffered an injury that will never heal, an injury that the crafty death of any good person will always put us at the mercy of the evil that life sometimes deals. It is an injury that could have been so easily avoided had the judgment of the sober person prevail as it should. To make matters worse for us, my elder brother was in the same accident and barely survived. He was seriously hurt and went through various rehabilitation processes. But the trauma of knowing a good person like him is now gone, all because somebody could not handle their drink, almost has lingered in my mind.

Campaigns of public awareness, like “Don’t Text and Drive,” and “Click It or Ticket,” have done a magnificent job of reducing fatalities. They point out that wearing a seat belt and not having a distraction are two absolutely necessary conditions for surviving a crash. Campaigns of public awareness cannot, of course, do any of this without our compliant participation. They are a little bit like the birds that sing at dawn; they serve as our reminders of the conditions that must be met if we want to increase our odds of surviving.

The death of a close friend in high school was due to an avoidable circumstance-she was hit by a drunk driver. Realizing just how close death can come to us when other people are making unsafe choices on the road gives one a new perspective on public safety. We can and should, of course, work to raise the unsafe driving practices that too many people still engage in to our society’s consciousness; anything that can be done to make “don’t do that!” to unsafe driving a “no-brainer!” that everyone can agree on will save lives.

Better road construction and safer vehicles will reduce the number of serious accidents and deaths. Roads can be engineered to greatly reduce the potential for accidents. This can be done by making the roads more user-friendly, building sensible transitions between different types of roads, and ensuring that intersections are as safe as possible. On the vehicle side, an investment in technology that helps prevent accidents and keep people safe in the event that an accident happens is paying off. Newer cars come equipped with an array of collision avoidance and survival technologies.

Increasing Attention to Drivers’ Mental Well-Being

At the same time, we must tackle road safety problems associated with mental health. Conditions like depression and anxiety affect a driver’s ability to make sound judgments and respond in a timely manner. Ensuring that all drivers have access to mental health resources, as well as understanding the potential road effects of their emotional conditions, might help reduce the number of accidents resulting from impaired (but not intoxicated) driving.

The way I see it, car accidents are the main thing that molds a person into an advocate for road safety. As I said before, I lost a family friend to DUI and almost lost my older brother in that same crash. Those tragic events focused my attention on the reckless driving that caused them and the devastating consequences that flowed from that recklessness. It is a hard reality to face, but I somehow find it even harder to accept that after being prevented, those events might not have happened at all.

In addition, losing a friend from high school to a drunk driver haunts me. I can’t even begin to describe the staggering pain and suffering that inebriated driver inflicted upon my friend’s family. To this day, I’m still convinced that my friend could be alive if that driver had chosen not to drive under the influence of alcohol. The upshot of all these fatal tragedies for me is a deep and abiding recognition that driving is a shared responsibility among everyone on and near the road.

How I Can Become a Better and Safer Driver

Keeping the past close, I have tried to become not just a better driver but a safer one. These are some of the ways I have tried to up the ante on safety. First of all, I never drive under the influence of alcohol or drugs. And that goes for all other distractions as well. Texting? Not a chance. Every time my phone dings, I want to respond right away, but I don’t. The dings can wait until I am not operating a two-ton hunk of metal. And that’s not quite death metal. I also wear my seatbelt. When I put it on, I immediately feel safer. Could you imagine not ever wearing your seatbelt? And encouraging your friends not to be the drivers they should be? I have done all those things and them some because I am that friend. I have also straight-up told my errant friends that I won’t put up with them being poor examples to others.

Final Words

Myriad approaches are used to attempt to slash the high death and injury rate associated with automobile accidents. The first and most obvious is driver education. Understandably, the more a person knows about the dangers of poor driving decisions, the less likely they are to make those poor decisions. But even the best driver can’t always be on his or her best guard. That’s why the second approach—reinforcement of laws—is so necessary. Penalties for DUI, for example, should serve as a serious deterrent to driving under the influence. Yet, of course, there’s no way to educate or enforce in a society as mobile as ours that everyone will drive with the aforementioned discretion and good sense at all times. The third vehicle of this trifecta is public awareness campaigns—an insistent reaching out to the driver’s better angels that, over the years, seems to have made a difference.

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