Fatal Accidents

The leading causes of fatal car accidents are speeding, driving under the influence, and driving without a seatbelt. These circumstances are easily preventable, but as much as you try to follow the rules and save yourself, there are other people on the road that don’t think quite the same. My family and I got rear ended two months ago. The driver of the other vehicle didn’t seem to notice that the light was red and that instead of speeding down the road, he should have stopped.Thankfully none of us sustained injuries, but this accident could have turned out way worse. Incidents like these are why it is important to educate drivers about how their seemingly small habits can kill themselves and others around them. This education would require the help of lawmakers, myself, and everyone around us.

On July 1st, my family and I all crammed into my dad’s car, excited to go to my pageant finale. At the time I was participating in the National American Miss State Pageant, and that Sunday was our final event where we receive trophies and the state queen is chosen. I met a friend named Leelah at the hotel where all the events were held days prior. I learned that she only lived 6 minutes away from me, so my dad volunteered to pick her up so that we can all go back to the hotel together. Shortly after, Leelah, my dad, aunt, grandma, and I were all happily sitting in our seats ready to get on the highway. We were stopped at a red light. All of a sudden…BOOM! Someone hit the car from behind. All of our bodies jerked forward in a quick motion. Head pain seemed to be the common theme among all of us. Out of everyone, I was the most worried about my 87 year old grandmother who was sitting right next to me in the backseat. She said she was fine, but still, I thought about how this could have been her last day, had the driver gone 10 mph faster. I was able to get Leelah and I to my car while the rest of my family waited for the police. We got to the hotel late, but thankfully didn’t miss anything. I felt dizzy, and quite nauseous, but I still pushed through and ended up winning 1st runner up for Heart of Service! While I was glad for my achievement, I still thought of how that driver could have ruined the lives of two young girls, a woman, a man, and an elderly lady earlier that day just because he didn’t stop at the red light.

I believe in education through experience. Experience trumps advice any day, which is why to prevent fatal accidents we should implement a car crash simulation course into the required drivers education requirements. I’ve had two great opportunities to participate in car crash simulations at my school. For the first one, select classes sat in the auditorium and watched a 3D movie about drunk driving. This program was also interactive. The students were given remotes to play a small quiz at the end about the movie we watched prior. Based on the reactions from those around me, this 3D film really left an impact on the kids. It showed that car accidents can really happen to anybody, and that being ejected from your seat and thrown onto the street in the middle of the night because you weren’t focused on the road is really a painful experience. That film still impacts me to this day because instead of being told “don’t drink and drive” or “don’t text and drive” I felt like I actually saw the consequences of these actions first hand, as if I was invisible and watching the real life of a person who made a mistake that I could have made. The second experience was a car crash simulation hosted by Grady Hospital. This experience was real life, and it even consisted of you being taken to the hospital in an ambulance, where you would spend the night. I signed up to participate in this program after seeing an invitation in my email and wasn’t chosen as a participant, but I could only imagine the impacts this program would have on many others who are just beginning to drive. I’ve been given advice by people about how to fix many problems, but I didn’t really start to listen until I really saw the consequences to my actions. Some people need to experience what could happen to them if they chose option A instead of option B. They need to use their five senses in order to properly identify danger. This is why a car crash simulation course should be required for all seeking to earn their license. Not just for young adults, but for all adults, because anybody can be die in a car accident, regardless of age.

There are many steps that can be taken to reduce the number of deaths related to driving in regards to education, but there also needs to be a push for automated cars because human error is inevitable. Humans make mistakes, and everyone is not made to be good at driving. As much as you lay out rules and tell someone to not do something, people have free will and make their own choices anyways. We cannot stop these people from driving because individual transportation is a necessity. Therefore, fixing the drivers isn’t the only way to reduce fatal accidents; we also need to fix the cars. Driving on the road requires limited and mundane actions that can be replicated with codes. Just like how you tell a video game character to move left, you can program a car to turn left. With fully self driving cars, there is no room for human error, reducing the number of fatal car accidents per year. Speeding will not happen, and there will be no “driving under the influence”, because nobody is operating the vehicle. Of course accidents will still happen because robots malfunction, but nonetheless, it is a safer option than purely leaving it up to the free will of a human to keep the lives of themselves and others safe.

As much as I know the risks of driving unsafely, I do not take my own advice. I have been a distracted driver shortly after I started driving on my own. In August of my senior year, my mother let me use her car to go to school since I was a part of work based learning and dual enrollment, which meant I had to leave campus everyday after first period to either go home or to go to Georgia Military College. I also was given the car so that I commute to my mother’s house on the weekends because she recently got married to a man that lives an hour away and neither of my parents wanted to drive the distance to take me to their respective homes. At this point I had set standards for myself: I won’t bring any friends in this car, I will not look at my phone or answer any texts until I get to where I need to go, and I will use the radio or my korean pop cd’s for music. I followed my plan flawlessly for the first few months, but then I started getting tired of listening to the same songs over and over. I went to Walmart to get an aux cord and this is where my biggest distraction came into existence. I don’t have Spotify Premium, Youtube Music, or Apple Music. I have no music subscription that allows me to play music without ads or skip songs with no limits. To work around this problem, I began manually skipping ads by closing the apps and reopening them, and changing the playlists to the songs, all while driving. Even worse, sometimes I would search for specific songs, which is as bad as texting and driving. Even more dangerous than that, when I got my own car I started changing the songs while I drove on the highway! I am completely aware of how detrimental this habit can be, as my quick glances down at the phone is all it takes for me to rear end somebody or hit a deer late at night. So far I have not seen the consequences to my actions as the worst thing I’ve done while trying to change a song was swerve a bit on the road. However I know that it is only a matter of time before that all changes. I don’t like that I change the songs while I am driving, and to fix this problem I want to get a Premium subscription so I can skip songs and ads on my playlists with no limits. However I don’t have a job, so a monthly subscription isn’t something I can afford. I will not drive my first year in college, but by the time I get back to my home during the breaks, I hope that I have enough income to afford a premium plan for my safety as well as for the safety of those around me. To stop my friends and family from doing the same thing, I can condemn their bad driving habits while they drive, enough that it makes them more conscious of doing it around passengers. Eventually they will stop, and it wont even be a habit that they partake in on their own because of guilt.