What Drives You to be Better?

Sirens, ambulances, EMT’s rushing to the rescue and the sight of wreckage from cars litter the side of the road. Unfortunately this is an all too familiar scene, far too frequent for a lot of society today. It is probably safe to say that we all know someone or have heard a story of someone who has lost their life while driving. But, we have the power to be able to reduce the number of deaths that result from driving! “How might we do this?”-you may be asking. Well, this is where the importance of driver education and awareness comes in. If we educate our drivers in a positive way, we can create more aware and better drivers. As communities and towns continue to grow in size and more and more people have access to cars, the risk of driving deaths goes up as well. If we focus on the good and what we can do to improve our driver education though, then the task of reducing driving deaths will become less daunting and more achievable. This can only be achieved if everyone works together to improve their driving and educate each other on the matter.

Sometimes it seems pointless to sit through driver’s education when you are first working towards your driver’s license. Why do we not just hand the keys over and let parents teach their kids how to drive? Why do we make people who get a lot of tickets or DUI’s do Defensive Driving Courses? All of these things are in place to increase driver education and reduce the number of deaths that occur every year from driving. Everytime we get into our cars we are taking a risk. One thing we can do to reduce the risk while we are driving is put our phones down! The text messages can wait. Skipping to the next song-can wait. Checking instagram or facebook-can wait. The split second decisions that we make in the car can determine long term consequences that will affect us in our future. Keep that in mind as you drive in the car.

Another step that we can take to make the roads safer and reduce deaths is to be a defensive driver. Growing up my mom used to say, “drive like everyone on the road is crazy and you don’t know their next move”. This taught me to always be on the lookout and to pay attention to the other drivers around me. Paying attention to the road and being ready at all times to hit the brakes or get out of the way can prevent a lot of wrecks and more casualties.

I personally, and luckily, have never had the experience of being in a car accident. However, I do live in Northern Utah where it gets very snowy and icy during the colder months of the year. The weather up here takes some time to get used to driving in. Every year when it gets cold it’s like everyone has to remember how to drive in the snow. When there have been accidents that I have seen or I have heard of, it usually happens because of two things: the bad weather and people being in a rush. We only have control over one of those factors, and it isn’t the weather. I have learned that even if it takes me having to leave 10-15 minutes earlier than usual to get where I need to go, it is less stressful because I am not driving in a hurry in the bad weather and putting others at risk. One thing I wish people realized is that it is better to arrive late to something then to never arrive at all.

Steps that I can improve and work on daily is not being impatient with others while I drive and staying away from my phone. Having patience with others while we drive and not getting mad when someone cuts you off or does not turn fast enough will go a long way. I think it will go as far as to reduce the amount of driving deaths that occur as well. Another obvious one, staying away from the phone. Your life or someone else’s life is not worth the seconds you are going to spend glancing down at your phone. I think that if we encourage others and praise safe, aware driving that we can create a positive atmosphere when learning more about driver safety. By doing this I think that we will create safer, more aware, and defensive drivers on the roads.