Steering Toward Safety: Transforming Driver Education

“Hey Kara”

“What Jo?”

“Karaaa!”

“I’m listening”

“NO look at me!”

Kara turns towards me while keeping one eye on the road, but I make sure to wait until I have her full attention. I stick out my tongue and wiggle it around appreciating the red lights shining through the windshield behind her. They perfectly match the Christmas lights to my right and my nose rosy with a slight cold.

That was it. She was gone.

I’m 20 now, but every night I’m 7 years old again, appreciating the color red until it spills out of my sister’s newly deceased body and wondering why any of this would happen to someone like my mom. But things like that do happen, and being my older sister or a good person didn’t change her fate. It won’t for anyone else either.

The fictional story I shared above may be disturbing to most, but for many it is like a reality they experienced and continue to deal with today. I remember in high school there was always at least 1 student every year that would die in a car accident. I would be at the dinner table with my family, and someone would drop the bomb. “Jake Thompson died in a car accident, on his way to home coming last night” or “Sarah, Lily, and Mason are all in the hospital after running off the road up in the canyon. They don’t think Lily is going to make it through the night and Mason lost the use of both his legs.” I would always go to bed sick with anxiety and heartbreak that my classmates, students who weren’t that different from me, could be a part of something so terrible, shocking, and often preventable.

In 2021 there were approximately 43 thousand fatalities due to car accidents (Fatality statistics). Motor vehicle accidents happen for a million different reasons, for some it’s their phone, others maybe they didn’t sleep enough the night before, or they had some alcohol, or maybe the universe just didn’t have another few years to spare them. Whatever the reason was, every single one of those deaths is one too many.

There is a lot of research supporting different safety practices and courses to help reduce car related fatalities. The specifications vary from state to state, but normally the government requires all drivers to pass a test and participate in a training period with limited driving freedom. Drivers under 18 are often required to take a driver’s education course, while those seeking licenses after their 18th birthday don’t (Driver’s license USA). Some accidents are unpreventable, still, using the tools learned during training can make a large difference with the ones that are.

Not just any training will make a difference in motor vehicle related deaths. Rodwell et al. (2023) talked about a new Goals for Driver Education (GDE) program. While basic drivers’ education aims to give young drivers concrete skills for common driving situations this program follows a hierarchical model. It begins with the most basic vehicle maneuvering skills, then follows into real time actions made by drivers to interact safely with other drivers and the driving environment, next GDE focuses on general factors related to a specific journey, may or may not be for a particular in-the-moment situation. Last, and most abstract level in the program focuses on macro-contextual factors that are often not specific to driving situations but may influence driving. The main point of this model is that the 3 lower levels will never be able to fully compensate for the final abstract level, though they will help drivers get by most of the time (Rodwell et al., 2023).

I love the GDE program idea. Young drivers benefit from standard drivers’ education courses and are no doubt more prepared for the road after participation; however, teens are still the leading demographic for fatal car accidents. One study found that motor vehicle related deaths peak in 18-year-olds (Rodwell et al., 2023). GDE takes the skills learned in standard drivers’ education courses, and then takes it a step further. Implementing GDE into drivers’ education courses required by the states. Many car accidents are due to lifestyle choices and couldn’t possibly be prevented by knowing the right way to hold the steering wheel. People need more assistance when it comes to something as serious and dangerous as driving a car, and GDE can give that to them. Focusing on life skills and abstract areas might just be the thing to make a difference in reducing motor vehicle related deaths, and maybe in the future no one will be left with an older sister that only haunts them in their nightmares.