The Importance of Safe Driving

One of the first freedoms you gain as an adolescent is the choice of whether you want to learn to drive. As a child, the thought of driving seemed fun and exciting because you get to act like a race car driver as you did with the Hot Wheels you got for your birthday. Once reality sets in, though, there is much more to driving than just going fast and straight. There are rules, laws, and ethics once you get behind the wheel. One wrong decision can lead to something catastrophic. It is important to understand how to be a safe and educated driver because you are holding your life and others in the palms of your two hands.

The youngest age someone can begin to drive is fifteen, with a parent. At the age of fourteen, someone who wants to begin to read and learn the rules of the road can. One of the easiest ways to learn is through a program of driver education. Driver education is especially important to inform the younger generation, who are willing to learn, of the rules and regulations of driving. In normal cases, there are two parts to beginning to drive on the roads: the learning permit and the driver’s license. The learning permit is what young drivers can earn before the age of fifteen and after the age of fourteen. This time of learning and not driving is vital in shaping young minds to think about safety. They are going from immature kids whose last thought is safety to teenagers who must be aware of their safety and now others. As someone who has gone through driver education, it is hard to sit still for hours reading about laws and who has the right of way. It is important to pay attention though because this education can be life or death. The program gives young drivers a background about how to keep themselves safe with seatbelts, blinkers, and how to gradually stop at a stop sign, but also teaches them how to look out for others who may not have paid attention during their driver education program.

Driver education can reduce the number of deaths as a result of driving by increasing the awareness of those who get behind the wheel. The program teaches young drivers all about the many signs seen on the road, including speed limit signs. The speed limit is there for a reason, to provide a safe and reasonable speed to protect drivers and others who may be on the road. Driver’s ignorance of these warnings is one of the leading causes of accidents on the road. I believe if drivers understood the reasoning and safety behind speed limits, there would be fewer accidents. Another lesson taught during the program is distracted driving. In this new day in age, almost every teenager has a cell phone. As a generation, we are practically glued to our phones, waiting for a Snapchat, or scrolling through the many videos on TikTok. Where teenagers forget to draw the line is scrolling at home and scrolling while driving. Just taking the second to answer Snapchat puts a driver’s life in danger and the people around them. Taking their eyes off the road can lead to leaning into the other lanes of the highway or not seeing a traffic sign and running a red light. This shows the importance of paying attention to driver education. Without the lessons learned in driver education, the roads would become even more unsafe than they already are.

Steps that drivers can take to reduce the number of deaths related to driving are having the right attitude, wearing a seatbelt, and being in the correct condition to drive. Everyone has had a difficult day before. You get a bad grade on a test, you get laid off at work, or every little thing is just making you angry. Just getting into the car and being over-emotional can put you and others around you in danger because you are not focused on the road, but more on the events before stepping into the vehicle. The best way to combat this is to take a second and breathe. You do not want your difficult day to become someone else’s too. To ensure safety in the case of an accident, drivers need to wear their seatbelts. This is Driver Education’s first lesson. Seatbelts can save many lives if there were to be an accident. Not only is it a law to have a seatbelt on, but it is also a precaution. Just taking those two seconds to buckle up can save your life. Lastly, being in the correct condition to drive is necessary. What I mean by being in the correct condition is not having any brain-changing substances in your body. For example, alcohol. Driving while under the influence is illegal for minors. Although the legal limit for alcohol to be driving is less than 0.08%, it is safer to have zero. Just one drink can alter your coordination and slow your reaction time. Why would someone want alcohol to be making the driving decisions and not themselves? In the case that a driver is under the influence, the safest decision is to have a designated driver or to call a pickup service.

In my experience, I have been in a car accident. It was one of the scariest moments I have ever been in. The call to my dad, crying because I did not know what to do, broke my heart and I cannot imagine what he felt like getting that call from his oldest daughter, his baby. In my situation, I failed to yield the right of way to a main road. I stopped at a stop sign and thought I was able to turn left, but there was a car turning that blocked my vision to oncoming traffic. There I was, eighteen, with no prior accidents or tickets, sitting in the middle of the road with a car stuck to mine on my driver’s side. Luckily, neither I nor the other driver were injured. This accident was my wake-up call, that I needed to slow down and check my surroundings just one more time because if I did my family would not have had to pay the four thousand dollars it took to repair my car.

As I have only been driving for two years, I still have much to learn. Some steps that I can take to become a better driver and help others as well, are to talk more about safe driving and to express the importance of driver education. As a society, we need to be able to step up when we see someone we care about, not practicing safe driving rules. If they are on their phone and you are in the passenger seat, offer to take their phone and respond to whoever they so desperately need to respond to so that they do not have to endanger the people in the car or those around them. Another form of action is to make sure that those learning to drive are actually learning. It is a lengthy process, but it is worth it to protect American citizen’s lives from the increasing number of deaths in driving accidents.

In conclusion, many drivers are not aware of what driver education and being safe can do for them. It may seem like a bright idea at the time to act like a race car driver, as you did when you were younger, but it will have its consequences. Through the driver’s program, young drivers can learn that their actions can lead to devastating outcomes but can be prevented through educating themselves, taking the correct steps to reduce deaths while driving, and spreading awareness of what safe driving can do for everyone that is on the road.