Road Ready

We all experience a sensation of joy when we finally get our driver’s license. It’s like a symbol of freedom, where you are no longer required to have someone watching over you at all times. However, this sense of freedom comes with a great deal of responsibility, which you must uphold fully. Many times, though, this does not happen and things will go wrong, potentially causing life-threatening injuries or death. Therefore, a comprehensive, quality driver’s education is important in order to educate young drivers on the situations they are most likely to face on the road on a daily basis in order to prepare them for the future.

Driver education is crucial for lowering the number of deaths as a result of driving. For starters, they teach you the basic operational tasks of the vehicle. Such commands include turning the wheel, throttle and brake application, and reading the meters and gauges on the dashboard. A strong base with mastery of these fundamentals is a huge step forward in road safety. Another reason why driver education is critical is because it teaches the students about road situations. Students might believe that everything will go according to plan and everybody around them will respect and follow the rules of the road, but this is not always the case. Driver education prepares drivers for these unusual situations ahead of time, in order to prevent them from losing control on the road due to confusion or scaredness.

Many steps can be taken to reduce the number of driving related deaths. An extremely effective method is to remove distractions in the vehicle. Such distractions can include a cell phone, the radio, and especially other passengers. Passengers are such a large distraction to the driver that the law prevents too many of them from being in the vehicle of an inexperienced driver such as a teen. Distractions such as these cause the driver to lose attention and focus from the road and direct it towards other things, such as looking down at a cell phone or turning to talk to someone. Even if just for a split second, this inattention to the road can cause a serious crash. By removing as many meaningless distractions from the vehicle, we can minimize the risk of inattention towards the road, and thus prevent more crashes.

Being in an accident is a scary situation. I have been in and have witnessed many crashes during my time in a car. Coming from personal experience, the vast majority if not all the crashes that I was in were due to either distractions in or outside the car getting the better of the other driver, or the other driver completely disregarding the rules of the road. While there is nothing that can be done to help fix the latter, limiting distractions in the car as mentioned earlier would have prevented a significant amount of crashes.

There are steps we can take to become a better and safer driver on the road. These will not only protect you and your health, but also the lives of others around you sharing the road. The first thing to remember is, you do not own the road. Do not make maneuvers without making sure they are safe and that you have clearly stated your intentions ahead of time. This will prevent miscommunication and possible collisions. Next, know your destination and the route before you start driving. Many times, drivers will know where they intend to go but do not have the knowledge of getting there. This can lead to them quickly changing directions or cutting corners in a dangerous manner on the road. By knowing what turns and roads to take ahead of time, the driver will minimize the amount of unknowns and variables from the start to the destination. Finally, removing as many distractions in the car will prove to be extremely beneficial. This simple idea of removing unnecessary items or people will make the driver find it that much easier to focus on the road and driving. Combining these three things together coupled with common sense and the strong fundamentals of driving, we can take steps to improve road safety and prevent senseless crashes on the roads.