Defensive Driving, Driver’s Education, and Why We Need More

Defensive Driving, Driver’s Education, and Why We Need More

My sister let one of her friends drive our car once. Only once. The allure of driving our car in particular was that it was a manual, and this friend wanted to learn. It was an older car, and shifting was difficult sometimes, especially when trying to get into first gear from a standstill. In retrospect it’s obvious that the new manual driver would stall the engine trying to start driving. Almost impressively, they didn’t stall immediately, and instead they stalled after their first stoplight. They were rear-ended by an ignorant driver, resulting in little damage to the rear-ender’s car, but shattered the rear windshield of our car. My sister and all of her friends were unharmed, but the car was declared totaled by our insurance. What I take from the story though, in retrospect, is that there are often multiple points where someone’s ignorance leads to a car accident.

Minimizing accidents—especially those that result in fatalities—through driver’s education is all about avoiding those points of failure. In my sister’s case, if she had the foresight to not let her friend drive, or if her friend avoided driving on major streets, or if they thought to turn hazard lights on after stalling, or if the other driver had recognized faster that our car was at a standstill. All of these (and possibly more) had to happen before they got rear-ended, and a similar chain of events can be seen with any other car accident. But each of these individual events could have been prevented to avoid the accident, making car accidents in general preventable—if drivers know how to avoid these points of failure. And so, preventing accidents starts with teaching skills and practices that curb these events.

Obvious is the importance of learning traffic law, but it’s often not enough (people forget vague traffic laws after years of driving without needing them). There will always be situations a driver didn’t expect, and learning how to respond safely is just as important. That is where learning defensive driving can be of aid. Defensive driving courses, and refreshing other driver education regularly, can immensely help a driver make the choices they need to avoid accidents. Such courses can help shape any driver into one that can react appropriately to situations on the road, and can reduce how often their actions will result in an accident. Drivers educated in careful driving skills can even help others around them become safer with friendly reminders from the passenger seat to avoid bad habits.

In a different vein, the CDC’s rankings for leading causes of death are morbidly fascinating to read. Nearly every one of the major causes is difficult for any individual to change—most of us will not cure cancer nor find a cheap preventative for heart disease. But one of the causes that stands out because it isn’t a health condition is the broad “Accidents” category. As of CDC’s latest data, motor vehicle accidents are 37,595 out of the 173,040 annual “Accident” fatalities. But the surprising part is that the other accident categories are nowhere near as preventable. In terms of “points of failure”, deaths due to falling or accidental poisoning are much harder to see coming: all it takes is a single loss of balance or mislabeled product. On the road, however, multiple people can take actions to avoid lethal accidents. It is one of the most preventable causes of death.

The truth is though, a single person learning defensive driving will do little to impact statistics. It will certainly help keep themselves safe, but there are still so many accidents that their safety does little to affect the thousands of deaths. But generally, the more people regularly educate themselves in driving practices, the more the roads will be safe. So, ideally, we would have every driver take driving classes. And, while that seems impractical, it could be only a few steps away from possible. Drivers are already incentivized to take advantage of such classes: If the reduced risk of being in accidents isn’t enough (people are generally bad at understanding risk management), the very physical advantage of reduced insurance costs can be a motivator for drivers. And the reasons against taking the class? Inconvenience.

So, to increase how many people regularly take advantage of driving courses and therefore safer driving practices, steps would need to be taken to reduce the barrier to entry and increase the incentive to participate. To make it easier for people to take these classes, they need to have more publicity. Insurance companies could more loudly advocate for drivers to take these classes, especially since insurance companies’ best customers are their safest ones. The process to enter into these classes should be as easy and simple as possible, and neither entry nor the class should take too much time. The advantages should also be as widely-known as possible, and as straightforward as possible.The proposition that taking a class only a handful of hours long could save hundreds on insurance over the course of a few years is enticing.

The point is, driving is dangerous. Far more than it should be, considering that many of us do it consistently. The steps that we can each take to make it safer are straightforward, and each of us have fair reasons to take them. When more people know about the dangers, they can see the advantage to taking a defensive driving class, sure. But if more people know what exactly the class offers for so little investment? Then perhaps more people will consider driver’s education and defensive driving.