Hands on the Wheel, Eyes on the Future: A Teen’s Journey from Fear to Safer Roads

When a teen finally reaches the age of being able to drive, the whole world becomes available; this achievement marks one of the biggest steps towards independence in a teen’s life. However, many other obstacles come forth; in my experience as a teen driver, I was afraid of being one of those “terrible, too fast, reckless, driving teens”, my dad always talked about while driving on the road. Also, during this time, many of my friends who were getting their licenses before me were sharing their experiences of getting into car crashes due to other teens who were new drivers or were somewhat distracted on the road. This left me questioning my ability to be a safe teen driver. I was dumbfounded by the number of accidents that would happen around my school, with the involvement of people I knew personally. I thought to myself, “Why would I want to drive if statistics show such unpleasant outcomes of teen drivers?”. I didn’t know how I was going to overcome this newfound fear that everyone before me seemed to have already conquered.

The pressure started to settle in when my peers and parents would question why I hadn’t had the desire to start driving yet. Soon enough, my parents signed me up for driver’s ed, which is where my driving journey started. Thankfully, I had an amazing driver’s ed driving instructor who was also my former volleyball coach; she not only taught me how to cope with my driving anxiety, but she also taught me how to be a safe driver. During our sessions, she instilled confidence in me and taught me that I just needed to get rid of any distractions, be a defensive driver, and, sooner than later, with practice and time on the road, I would become an amazing driver.

What I’ve noticed from my peers many of them have the same issues when it comes to driving, but they never had a good mentor to guide them to do the right thing, so they developed bad habits like texting and driving, blasting music, and driving more the 12 mph over the speed limit daily. As more teens don’t get the right mentorship, these habits become the norm, and as more teens start to drive, they watch the ones before and replicate the same bad habits as the generation before. Yet, with the growth of a new generation’s society has a fresh opportunity to change the way teens drive.

Schools, families, and friends can break the ongoing statistics and teen driving deaths and accidents for the next generation. By identifying the specific barrier that is making teen driving unsafe, society can change these things to make the roads safer. Three levels of change can be implemented to make positive change.

First, it is creating a change in the current drivers in the community; if adults become models for good driving habits like staying off the phone, managing road rage, and obeying the speed limit. The nature inclination in humans to be a follower will come forth; therefore, the habits that are seen in adults will soon transfer to teens. This change can be practiced by any adult who drives, no matter if they have kids or not; they are still seen by the younger generations. Second, teen drivers can use apps like LifeSaver to help themselves make good driving decisions. This app gives personalized feedback that helps you make safer driving choices. When it detects that you’re driving, the app locks distracting features on your device. Lastly, teens usually look at their peers to see how to do things and what’s popular and not; do to this reason, schools should implement more peer-led programs instead of teacher-led led, like in health class. With peer-led programs, students who have learned how to drive safely can mentor younger students, and the schools could allow students to make social media content and outreach programs to bring attention to safe driving to students. With teens talking to teens, the student can easily seek the right people to overcome their driving challenges. Nevertheless, schools must reach out to students who have to qualifications to advocate for safe driving and push the teen driving stigma for generations to come.

Teens don’t have to be chained by the same fears and pressures that I had when I was beginning to drive; they can feel confident in themselves as safe teen drivers. As a society that sees teen crashes on the news, hears firsthand experiences of teen crashes, and people who read the sadening statistics of thousands of teen deaths a year, we must stand up for the next generation.