Road Watching

It’s a hot, sunny day in rural Alabama circa 2008, and I’ve just driven a golf cart into a ditch. Only 8 years old at the time, I was on a short driving trip with my 7-year-old sister and my grandad, who wanted to introduce us to the basics of driving with a safe, supervised expedition in his golf cart, which he had acquired recently to get around his countryside property easier. Unfortunately, the half-second he took to look away from what I was doing to talk to my sister was more than enough time for me to bring the trip to an unexpected stop. The experience, needless to say, put me off the concept of driving for a while.

Almost a decade later in 2016, it’s yet another hot, sunny day in suburban Maryland, and I’m going entirely too fast down a slope running next to our neighborhood, gently trying to slow myself down with the brakes before I shoot past the stop sign waiting at the bottom of the hill. My dad, sitting next to me in the passenger seat, yells for me to stop in a tone I’d never heard him use, and I slam on the brakes to stop just in time. It’s at this point that I swear off driving entirely, opting instead to lean into public transportation where I can and enjoy being a passenger – a road watcher, not a road driver. Now, 9 years later, I stand ready to try learning to drive again. This time however, I’m taking a closer look at the roads around me, and realizing that incidents like the two I described from my past seem to be happening more and more often to other drivers, only with much more powerful vehicles than a golf cart, and ending much more disastrously than my run-in with the sloped road.

While I’m fortunate enough to say that I’ve never witnessed or been involved in a car accident, it’s true that I’ve been in a vehicle with some very dangerous drivers, with one of them being a friend of my sister’s whom she and her other friends would sometimes have to physically prevent from driving, just because of how recklessly she did so. Stories like the ones I’ve shared aren’t uncommon among those my age, and neither are the kinds of drivers that put themselves and other motorists at risk with their driving style. With more and more eager drivers getting behind the wheel every year, it’s clear that we need to be more diligent in our driver’s education efforts and personal driving habits, and discover new ways to cultivate and encourage safer practices on the road.

Safer driving habits can come in many forms, and from some pretty surprising places; all it takes is putting them together in one practice. Little tips and tricks, like taking a break every 100 miles on a long journey or making sure not to stare off at one place for too long while driving can go a long way towards improving your driving ability and safety. Of course, applying small pieces of advice isn’t enough to truly improve the state of our roads – we need a more widespread effect on things. What I would suggest is a focus on defensive driving in driver’s education, focusing more on calm assessment of traffic situations and leniency towards other drivers over aggressive self-interest and risk-taking. I believe we should also be developing education materials dedicated to teaching young drivers not to be reliant on technologies like rear-view cameras, self-driving models of vehicles, or screens on the inside of cars (like Tesla screens or Apple CarPlay dashboards); being a competent driver means being able to operate the vehicle without the use of convenience features that may prove unreliable in extreme driving conditions, and it’s important that drivers as a whole not get used to having these features so they aren’t at a disadvantage if they find themselves unable to use them.

The mental aspects of driving are just as, if not even more important than the physical aspects of operating a vehicle. Something that can often go overlooked with newer drivers is the inherent anxiety stemming from operating a motor vehicle, especially in high-traffic situations and dense population areas. Speaking personally, this anxiety is the number 1 reason I’ve yet to secure a driver’s license for myself. It’s impossible to entirely get rid of this fear, so it’s important to engage with it in a way that feels constructive and respectful, placing an emphasis on meeting young drivers where they’re at and approaching their driving education at their own pace. I think many new drivers feel pressured to dive headfirst into the practice when they become old enough to do it, either by their peers, family members, or societal conditioning to be ready for the act of driving when the law deems it legal to participate. By turning those expectations on their head and letting drivers-in-training take things at their own pace, I believe more people will be able to approach driving with more confidence and prowess than they would if they forced themselves to match everyone else’s pace, leading to fewer mistakes and accidents on the road and a greater appreciation for safe driving.

Not all of us can take to the road well, but we can all learn how to identify dangerous driving patterns and gain the courage to speak up about them. It’s not enough to just be a road watcher or driver; you need to be both. There’s a lot of work yet to be done to mitigate death on the roadways for all ages, and it’s work that will likely take generations. But if we can start to take action about it now, I think we’ll be well on our way to a safer driving public. I’m hoping to be a part of this change myself by adopting the strategies I’ve mentioned, and I hope to be on the road myself at last soon enough.

But hey, if all else fails, I can always wait another decade to try my hand at driving again. 2035 or bust!