Focused on the Road

Buzz, buzz. Your phone starts to vibrate so you look down at your phone to see what the notification was. Suddenly, WHAM. You just hit another car because you were too busy looking at your phone instead of paying attention to the road. You see that the car has a nice family in it too. Is this not an awful thing to happen, well there is an average of 34,000 deaths each year just in America from the result of driving. There are a couple of things that I want to talk about such as driver education, steps that can be taken to reduce this number, individual experiences, and the steps that I can personally take for safer driving.

The first topic I want to talk about is the importance of driving education that can help reduce this extremely high number of deaths. Personally, when I first started to drive, I had no idea about the dangers and distractions that there are while driving. When I took driving school they really abbreviated these distractions and how to limit them. Distractions including phones or even other people. Driving school helped me realize how dangerous cars can be and how to stay focused on the road. I believe if everyone took driving lessons again and really payed attention to what is being taught that the overall death rates of driving related deaths would be reduced significantly.

A couple of steps can be taken to reduce the death rates such as something as simple as just putting the phone down or turning the phone off. Some more steps can be to not be afraid to tell whoever is in your car to chill out if they are affecting how, you drive and how focused you are. When you are driving, and you hear your phone vibrate it is very tempting to pick it up and look at the notification you just received. If you turn your phone off or on silent then it would not buzz and there would not be that intense temptation to check your phone. Sometimes people can also be very distracting while driving. There have been a couple times where I have been driving and my friends are being very distracting in which I tell them to chill out so I can focus on the road. Turning your phone off and just being straight up with the people in your car are a couple steps that can be taken to reduce the death rates of driving related incidents.

I have never been in a car accident myself but there have been a couple of times where I have witnessed my dad have irresponsible driving tendencies. One time my dad was driving while I was in the passenger seat and a car was riding our butt. My dad was going the speed limit, but he still pulled over and let the car pass. Everything seemed fine until suddenly, my dad sped up and started to be inches from the car’s back. All it would have taken was one brake and there would have been a car crash. My dad then told me he did not know why he did that, and I told him it was just his emotions taking over which is why it is important to stay calm while driving. My dad also has a bad bladder in which as crazy as it sounds, he will pee while driving. It is easy to pull over and go, but he insists he cannot wait while driving. Obviously, this is not safe because he is heavily distracted and in an awkward position if something happens and he needs to brake. These are just a couple of individual experiences that I have witnessed.

Some steps that I can personally take are to follow my own steps that I have already talked about such as turning my phone on silent while driving and to just not do too much while driving. Driving is an incredibly good invention that helps us tremendously, but it also is extremely dangerous. Something so simple such as turning my phone on silent eliminates a lot of the distractions that humans have while driving. I also will do things such as pulling over if I need to go to the bathroom unlike my dad. I also tell my friends to chill if I ever feel like I am not focused on driving, and they are being very distracting.

The overall death rate of driving-related deaths each year just in America is absurd and we as people have a lot of work to do on it. Things such as driving school education, turning the phone on silent and just overall being calm on the road can slowly reduce this number and make America an overall safer place on the road.