Driving’s education program make communities safer

My parents took me to get my learners permit pretty much as soon as I turned 16 and was eligible, they also enrolled me in drivers’ education and started taking me out to practice in their car. They wanted to ensure that I knew how to drive, and that I learned safe habits. I think that they succeeded, I’ve now been driving for over a decade without any serious collisions or damage.

Safe driving is a public safety issue, and it can and should start with teens. When you learn safe defensive driving techniques from the start, you can avoid picking up bad habits that you will later need to unlearn. Drivers’ education means a trained professional is teaching you best practices and making sure that you are aware of the traffic laws relevant to your province or state. I really believe that learning early, and learning from someone trained in the safest practices, can make a positive impact on your driving for the rest of your life. The ability to drive, when paired with the knowledge of safe and legal driving practices, gives teens a sense of independence that can be very beneficial to them.

I think that one of the biggest challenges for teen drivers, and really drivers in general, is distracted driving. There are just so many things these days demanding our attention. Texting and driving is a big problem, and it’s something many people from all age groups are guilty of. With cell phones almost always in our pockets, it can be tempting to pull them out to send or check messages, to look for different music, some people even film TikToks and other content while driving, taking their eyes off the road to focus on what’s happening on their screens.

A lot of people simply don’t realize how dangerous this is. Most people have become accustomed to multitasking and to always being available for whatever is happening on our devices. But when operating a vehicle, the moments it can take to type a message or check an email can be enough to cause an accident, potentially harming ourselves, other drivers and passengers, pedestrians, and causing property damages.

Another common issue for teenage drivers is simply lack of experience. The more practice you get driving safely and legally, the more safe habits you create. Supervised driving experience is a huge part of this, as it allows teens to make the mistakes while a trained adult driver is there to correct them and provide guidance. This can be a driving instructor, or even parents or another trusted adult, as long as they are patient and stick to proven safe driving techniques, it will instill the same in the teen’s own driving.

Both issues can be addressed with proper training before bad habits are formed. Teens often feel invincible, and without being made fully aware of the danger related to their actions, they can often put themselves and others in harms way. This is also why it’s important to show the reality of the damage that can be caused by unsafe driving.

Aiming to get teens driving earlier is also a way to help instill safe driving habits. The younger you are when you start something new, the easier it is to absorb all of the information. Friends of mine who learned to drive as adults were much more nervous and took longer to feel comfortable behind the wheel than my friends and I who started young. Often their parents either didn’t push them to get their license early, or their family may not have had the resources to help them when they still lived at home.

I think that even if you don’t feel you will be a frequent driver, it’s important to get your licence and become comfortable behind the wheel, you never know what situations might come up in the future and having that foundation of safe driving taught to you through both instruction and experience when your young can really make a difference if you do need to use it. Even when I didn’t have a car of my own, there were times when my ability to safely and legally drive turned out to be very necessary. I’ve driven friends cars when needed after they had become intoxicated and I was sober, I have traded seats and driven my parents’ car home when my dad has had to get out to respond to a call at the fire department he was part of, and now that I do have my own car, I’m glad to have had my licence all those years, even if I only drove sporadically.

Everyday, especially since moving to the city, where roads are much busy than the small town I grew up in, I see drivers making unsafe choices. People disregarding traffic laws to attempt to get to their destination a little bit faster, as a pedestrian I have been almost hit more times than I can count crossing the street, even in marked crosswalks, by drivers who are either in too much of a rush or are too distracted to see me. This is something that I see from people of all ages, but if I had to guess, I would say they have been driving in this manner since first getting out on the roads.

Because early and proper driving education is so important, I believe that schools have a responsibility to promote safe driving for teenagers. In my hometown, there was driver’s education available, but it was not affiliated with the high school. I think if schools partnered with these drivers ed companies, they could better ensure that the courses were easily accessible to their students, and could promote it, perhaps even offering a school credit or a discount for completing the course prior to graduation. Teenagers from all family situations should be incentivized to learn how to safely drive rather than it being a privilege for some who can afford the cost and make the time for it, and this would encourage more students to take advantage of the opportunity to learn safer driving habits than if teens or parents have to search out the courses and schedule it on their own.

More teens completing safe driving courses means more educated drivers on the roads, which makes roads and communities safer for everyone who lives there, and in turn even makes it safer for the next generation of teens to begin learning how to drive. Like most types of education, the benefits are substantial to not only the student, but also those around them. Driving is a common, everyday occurrence for many people, and we don’t often stop to think about the risks that come along with it, it’s time to change that and promote better understanding,