False Security

False Security

Good driver education can not only save your life but save others as well. With the number of deaths due to car-related incidents reaching 1.29 million worldwide it is clear that bad driving isn’t just a problem anymore but a pandemic. This year has been packed with many new surprises and an illness that startled the globe. But with one pandemic tampered another is on the rise. Taking over a million people each year, mainly new drivers or young adults who don’t take the dangers of the road seriously. The lie that cars are not dangerous has made drivers lack the proper safety precautions needed to make the roads safe. Acts of this false security can be seen daily which is sad due to the many things we could do to stop it.

When on the road with my mother I can especially see this lack of precautions. My mother often drives too fast, she says the speed limit is too slow. My mother often screams while she drives, she says talking doesn’t get the point across. My mother often texts while driving, she says calling is too difficult. My mother often smokes and drives, she says she just can’t wait. My mother doesn’t think driving is worth her attention and that scares me. It scares me every time she goes 40 over the speed limit. It scares me when my mom would scream in the car and look in the back seat. It scares me when my mother would text on a busy highway and swerve around the road. It scares me whenever she would take both hands off the wheel to light a cigarette.

My scares are nothing compared to the actual accidents that happen every day. They’re scares that turn into more than just scares but a fatal crash that can kill and ruin the person and their family’s lives. My mother and so many people like her don’t take driving seriously and that cost those surrounding them. I’ve sworn to never drive like my mother, the years of scares, almost accidents, accidents, and overall inability to change have made me the driver I am today. Which the driver I am today is cautious, vigilant, focused, and most importantly adjustable. So even though my mother’s driving has scared me and continues to scare me I am better because of it.

For people without the motherly scares from their childhood, how do they know what to look for? Good driving isn’t just a thing you’re born with but a trait you acquire through hard work and persistence. How can we make the next generation of drivers aware of the dangers? I think the best place to start would be within schools as young as elementary. This installation of the necessary precautions from such an early age can boost the way children see the road. The goals of these programs will be not to scare kids but to warn them. Another way to make the roads safer would be to install road rage seminars in colleges and high schools. These would allow for tips and trips on ways to avoid getting angry on the road. Road rage can lead to as many accidents as anything else due to the lack of reasonable thinking during these times. The last initiative I think would benefit road safety is “safe sleep zones”. I think the installation of these on college campuses and other public spaces would allow drivers to feel less obligated to drive home after a night of drinking. The sleep stations would be the last line of defense to stop drunk drivers, which kill 30 people in the US each year and injure 290,000.

There are very good reputable programs on safe driving advocacy but they are not enough. These programs educate but they don’t instill the real dangers of the road and why safety should be a top priority. The driving pandemic has to be faced head-on, the world was so focused on Corona it lost sight of another much more pressing problem that has been prevenient for centuries. I believe that with more programs of greater variety the whole world could benefit from safe driving and this would save uncountable lives for years to come. If we work together to lift the veil of false safety we could prevent the new generation of drivers from entering the driving force with wrong presumptions. Cars are the past, present, and future, but we can make the future safer for everyone on the roads.