Safety on the Road: How Safe Driving Habits Can Change Your Life

Driver education is a crucial aspect to the way people get around. It teaches people about the laws of the road, and by doing this ultimately makes the road a safer place. Without driver education, anyone could get behind the wheel with little to no experience, and the number of deaths would increase greatly.

Despite the laws and educational requirements for driving in the United States, the death toll is unfortunately still way too high. In the United States in 2022, a whopping 42,795 people died in car accidents. That’s an average of 117 deaths per day. Though these numbers are astronomical, there are so many actions that can be taken to prevent these from being so high in the future. By focusing even more on education, putting emphasis on raising new drivers in safe driving habits, and prompting people to come up with safety rules to live by, the road will be a much safer place.

To significantly reduce the casualties on the road in the country, driver education programs need to hone in on specific aspects of driving safety. According to research, thirty-two percent of car accidents come from drunk driving. This is a HUGE percentage. Though driver education classes touch briefly on drunk driving, this is not nearly enough. There should be much more information, so much more content, reviewed with drivers related to this topic. There should be a larger section, possibly even a whole separate course, dedicated to learning about this. If people were more aware and educated on this topic, fewer people would drive drunk, and people would be more cautious in the hours people are more likely to drink. However, education alone cannot stop this problem. Of all drunk driving crashes in the United States, seventeen percent of them are caused by individuals under the age of twenty-one. Though instruction through courses could have an impact on these young drives, a larger impact will come not from this, but from parental and friend influence. People are more likely to listen to and trust the people closest to them, so if friends, parents, and family members focus on educating their young drivers on how crucial it is that they follow these rules. With the combination of specific driver education courses, along with ceaseless attention from friends and family members, drivers will be much more cautious on the road.

I wasn’t aware of the extreme necessity for road safety until a few years ago when I started driving. This was when I first began to notice it, not just because of my own experiences, but because of other’s experiences as well. Two years ago, my sister and my grandpa got in a large car accident, where a man in a van tried to split two lanes, rear-ending several cars, including theirs. This resulted in them being pushed out into the intersection and hit from the front. After the crash was over and the situation was assessed, it was revealed that the driver responsible for the crash was heavily under the influence of drugs. Fortunately, neither my grandpa nor my sister were injured in the wreck, my sister wasn’t the same after it. For weeks afterward, she was nervous to ride in the car. Even now sometimes, when I drive her, I notice her flinching when cars pass us by a little too quickly on the road. She also hates loud noises, which is something that never bothered her before this incident. Though I felt sympathy for my sister, I never understood exactly what she was going through until I nearly experienced something similar myself. One Monday morning a few months ago, I was driving on the freeway to school. Due to traffic, the road speed went from sixty-five to five miles an hour really quickly, reducing cars to a near-stopped pace. I noticed this, but unfortunately, the driver behind me did not. It wasn’t until the last minute he slammed on the brakes, his tires screeching as his truck tried to skid to a stop. As it became clear that that wasn’t going to be enough, he tried to turn into the dirt and go around me. This, however, just resulted in more skidding, as the car slid sideways, tires smoking, just barely stopping before hitting my back bumper. I remember the experience happened in slow motion for me, a five-second panic that felt more like five minutes. The rest of the drive to school, I couldn’t stop shaking. Those next few days, I had my parents drive me to school, due to apprehension of the same thing happening again. Even now, months later, I still haven’t gotten over the habit of checking my rear-view mirrors unnecessarily often, fearful that a distracted driver might crash into me. Now I know that car accidents are very serious situations, and understand the importance of road safety from a whole new perspective.

Bringing everything together, though, there was one major thing I noticed that was similar between my and my sister’s situations: both of them could have easily been prevented if the drivers responsible had found an alternate method of transportation. Whether it be a friend or family member, Uber, or some other method, both of these drivers could have evaded the situations that they put themselves and others into. This is one of my most important steps to be a safe driver on the road. I have a list of close family members and friends that I know, should I need a ride, would drop everything to give me one. To keep others safe on the road, I can encourage my friends, family members, and other acquaintances to do the same, for the protection of themselves and others. There are so many lives lost on the road each year, but if these actions are adopted by more people, these deaths will be significantly reduced, and fewer parents, siblings, friends, and others will have to mourn.