The War on Reckless Driving

19 March 2021

The War on Reckless Driving

Cars are something that a good amount of people on this planet will drive at least once in their lives, cars make getting from point A to point B a “walk” in the park. One thing we humans still have problems with is knowing how to safely drive those cars. Every year over 30,000 U.S. Highway drivers die, while some deaths may be the result of faulty breaks or engine problems, the majority of the deaths were caused by the negligence of the driver. In 2005, 43,510 people on the U.S. highway died due to the negligence of either themselves or the people around them, not only does this number of people who died in only 1 year almost beat the number of deaths caused in the Vietnam war (47,000), but it is also the highest number of deaths caused by driving since 1990 (44,599). The most devastating war in U.S. history was World War 2 with 291,557 U.S. soldier deaths, the United States was in the war for 4 years, if we took the amount from 2016-2019 of total car deaths we would get 147,959 deaths in 4 years from cars alone.

The biggest question we ask is, why does this happen and how can we stop it? Kids in the U.S. can get a driver’s license at the age of 16, while almost 78% of other countries in the world require you to be 18 years old to get a driver’s license. Now, 2 years doesn’t make a huge difference, if you’re reckless when you’re 16 it’s a big chance that you’re reckless when you’re 18. The thing you would have to do to lower the deaths is to educate the drivers before anything happens. It’s easy to get a permit here in the United States, you simply go to a place that allows for permit tests and you spend ten minutes at the most answering simple questions about roadsigns and situations. I think one way we could inform the future drivers of America would be to make them watch a 10-20 minute long video explaining the importance of road safety by showing them accidents and the people (before and after the accident) it will show them the damage (both physical and psychological) of these events.

Some big steps that can be taken to reduce this number of deaths would be to add more laws on getting caught on the phone or not paying attention, people shouldn’t be left with so many warnings if they’re caught with their phone in their hand, instead, it should be a ticket or a suspension of their license since they know that if you drive with your phone in your hand, you’re taking the chance to endanger someone else’s life.

Some other steps involve you as a driver to educate your fellow drivers on the road about safety, let’s say you’re driving on the street and you see a guy repeatedly looking up from his phone and back down, you could wait for a stoplight and get his attention, this would give you enough time to talk some sense into the guy before he gets himself or someone else hurt. If that doesn’t work it would probably be best to get his license plate number and contact the police to get him off the streets to protect himself and pedestrians. Even if you think that the person you reported will be mad, in the end, you’ll be potentially saving two people’s lives, the driver, and the victim.

A lot of people drive irresponsibly to impress their friends or to get places faster. I don’t drive irresponsibly, but I would be lying if said I wasn’t a bit of a lead foot. I’ve never been in a car accident nor have I seen my friends in one, but I have seen my friends drive irresponsibly. A lot of young kids will drive with their phones in their hands usually on Snapchat or texting, this is a huge problem for this generation and I think kids should get into more trouble than adults for doing this mainly because it’s the kids who most recently took drivers ed to learn about road safety and the dangers of driving while distracted. It seems almost disrespectful to the people who go out of their way to learn everything they can about road safety to keep you safe, just for kids (and adults) to go and create danger by texting and driving.

One big thing you can do to educate people about the dangers of irresponsible driving is to show them some statistics, once I had a look at the number of deaths from drivers compared to wars it made me check twice, I had to look back to make sure I was even looking at the right numbers. If you want people to be safer drivers you need to drive it in their head (not literally) when they’re young, not by posters, but by showing the results of people’s mistakes. Once kids start entering high school it should be mandatory to have an assembly once a year talking and showing the results of these devastating events. With all of that being said, it makes you think that with the number of deaths in the U.S. alone caused by motor vehicles, there really is A War on Reckless Driving.

Work Cited

Motor Deaths: Motor vehicle fatality rate in U.S. by year – Wikipedia

War Deaths: United States military casualties of war – Wikipedia

Age to drive in other countries: Minimum Driving Age by Country – Rhinocarhire.com