The Privilege and Tragedy of Driving

Driving a car in todays world is a very important aspect in of our lives today in the world. They help us go to work, to the grocery store, to and from school, etc. Not only is it a important aspect to our lives in today’s society, it is a privilege to be able to drive and those who do drive, should treat that privilege with the utmost respect. Unfortunately, some people take advantage of that privilege and they abuse that ability to drive by driving recklessly and causing accidents. A lot of those accidents unfortunatly cause the deaths of drivers across the world. In 2021, an estimate showed that 20,175 people died in a fatal car accident just in the begining half of the year alone in the United States. It is important that drivers education needs to become more stricter towards applicants so that the estimate for the death toll in future years can decrease.

I personally have had many close encounters with car accidents and have witnessed a few in my lifetime. When I was around being a toddler, I was in the backseat of my mothers car when a man in a big truck crashed into the back of our car taking the back bumper off. Thankfully no one was hurt; however our car is very small compared to most and from that crash it could’ve easiely flattened the car and my mother and I with it inside. Very recently, I was coming home from school and I saw a crash scene that involved two cars and the front end of one of the cars was crushed and the engine was sticking out and the other car looked like it was t-boned and was crushed from the side. It is people like this that do not pay attention to the road and being ignorant of others around them that cause crashes like these.

The easiest steps to driving safely and keeping the road a safer place are usually the simplest. The easiest thing to do is to put on your seatbelt because many deaths involve people being ejected from their car because they were not wearing their seatbelt. Most if not all car accidents happen because the person was driving fast and recklessly. There are many street races that happen around the neighborhood I used to live in and hearing someone crashing or dying whether it was the driver or a person walking was not a rare thing to happen. Even if a person is in a rush, they should obey the speed limit and make sure they a driving safely because others should not need to have a very bad day because someone was late to a event or just wanting to get home or to a location faster. The most important thing a person should always do when driving should be paying attention to the road at all times. Most car accidents are also caused by someone too busy sending a text message or looking at other things while driving. You see at least one person on their phone driving everyday you are on the road. A person driving should always be paying attention to their surroundings, especially looking forward. A text message can wait until the driver has parked or gotten out of their car and phone calls and voice mails should only be limited to speaker and/or the speaker on some model cars that have that option.

When first taking the drivers course, the person should be required to have taken the online courses of at least 30 hours, have time with in person courses with the instructor, and at least 100 hours of driving experience. There are also requirements for classes for at least more than a month and are taught all the person needs to know about driving and some instructors prefer “Hands on learning” and will grade you based on how well a person does on their driving test. After completing the course, today it is required that a person needs to renew their drivers license every five years in the state of California. This is all very important because it allows instructors to grant the people that are ready to drive their license and those who aren’t to not be allowed to drive, but with a chance to be able to retake the test if they fail the test for whatever reason. This helps with preventing car accidents by restricting those who are not ready to be behind the wheel to not be able to drive which in turn prevents accidents from happening.

Driving in todays world is one of the most important aspects of our society. It allows us to have faster and easier transportation to different locations and has help revolutionize the world since it’s creation. It is a privilege to be able to drive and it should not be taken for granted because although it is very helpful and convenient, it is also very dangerous for the driver and others around. Driving a car is very important to all of us, but to have laws and requirements because of the amount of accidents they cause every year is even more important. Which is exaclty why Driving Education is very important to have and should be updated and changed every year in hopes of making that unfortunate statistic every to decrease.