Keep Your Eyes on the Road

Keep Your Eyes on the Road

Driving can be one of the biggest steps that teenagers take in becoming an adult. You finally gain some freedom and feel like you can do anything. Driving can also be a very scary and dangerous experience if you are not careful. I believe that there are three main factors that teens struggle with when they first start driving.

We now live in a world that is full of noises and distractions. We all have phones that are always buzzing and trying to get our attention. Many teens have upwards of five hours of screen time on their phones each day. It’s not hard to believe that this carries over to when we are driving and can cause problems. Phones have become a staple of life for this generation of teenagers, so it can be hard not to look at them when they go off while we’re driving. One way that we can counter this struggle is silencing our phones and putting them in a place where we can’t see them while we drive. This can take away the temptation to look at them. Driving is an activity that needs 100% of our attention, so we cannot share any of that attention with our phones.

Another challenge that teens have when first starting to drive is learning to be aware of other people. When I started driving, I assumed that as long as I focused on myself, I would stay out of accidents. About 3 months after getting a driver’s license, I learned that this is not the case. I was driving to school on a normal day, going slow behind the person in front of me because there was heavy traffic. I was in the left lane of a two-lane road. All of the sudden I get smacked by the person behind me, destroying my trunk. I saw him signal to switch into the right lane, trying to speed around me. Unfortunately, he didn’t see that there was already someone in that lane and swerved back into my lane without being able to brake in time and hit me. It can be very overwhelming for kids that are just learning to drive to have to pay attention to what they’re doing as well as what everyone else is doing. The way that we can counter this challenge is to practice being aware of your surroundings when you’re still driving with your parents. Getting more comfortable checking your mirrors often can help when you drive by yourself in a world of distracted drivers.

The last factor that can lead to teenage drivers struggling is that we tend to have less exposure than kids used to. It happens all the time when I look next to me at a light and I see the kid in the passenger seat staring at their phone instead of paying attention to their parents driving. Then in the backseat I’ll see a younger kid playing on their iPad. Both kids are going to have to drive someday, but they are completely unaware of anything that’s happening on the road. The only way to be prepared when you start driving is to have exposure. How to counter this problem is to just put your electronics down and pay attention while your parents are driving.

A little over a year ago, my mom got in a car accident on her way home. She was doing nothing wrong, driving the speed limit in the right lane. There was a new teenage driver that was trying to cross over four lanes. She didn’t see my mom and she pulled right in front of her. It happened so fast that my mom couldn’t swerve out of the way. The airbag in the car hit my mom’s right arm as she was swerving, breaking both bones in her arm. I was at an after-school tennis practice while all of this was happening. You can imagine my horror when I saw a notification that my mom was in a crash followed by numerous calls from my dad. Luckily she was okay, but they were in the emergency room, and she needed surgery on her arm. This incident could have very easily been avoided. I don’t know what specifically caused the young driver to make that mistake, but it could’ve been any of the factors I mentioned. She might’ve been on her phone, or she might have just not had enough experience in situations where she had to turn across multiple lanes. Either way, it shows how important it is for teenage drivers to be well prepared before driving and to be focused on the road while driving.

It is critical for teens to have a proper education before driving on their own. The education should not only focus on the rules of the road, but also how to handle their own distractions as well as other drivers who might be distracted. It is also important for new drivers to have plenty of exposure to all types of driving scenarios. Communities need to take actions to make sure these new drivers have the tools they need to be cautious and safe when on the roads.