Driver Education Initiative 2024: In the Driver’s Seat

I was so excited to start driver’s education at 14 years old and 9 months, but my parents didn’t think I was mature enough to begin that early. I was able to convince my parents to allow me to begin driver’s education just after I turned 15 years old. I found out that I was the youngest in my driver’s education training class, which I thought was very odd at first. I quickly learned from my instructor that our generation is very immature for our age compared to past generations. That was proven to me once I was in the backseat of the driver’s education vehicle and another student was driving behind the wheel. Some of my classmates thought it was a fun game to be driving and not taking it very seriously at first.

I was so nervous that I would be a horrible driver until I witnessed other students in my class behind the wheel ignoring other drivers, stop signs and signal lights. Thank goodness our instructor had his own brake on the passenger side, it helped us from getting T-boned multiple times. As our class time and behind the wheel experience progressed with our instructor, the entire class was improving on their driving skills. I learned firsthand how important it was to attend driver’s education classes to be safe on the roads. I believe if we didn’t have driver’s education classes and behind the wheel practice, we would have even more deaths caused by careless driving. As a student you learn to be aware of your vehicle surroundings at all times and watch for other vehicles that may run signal lights or stop signs.

Since I’ve graduated driver’s education and have had my license for almost 2 years now, I’ve seen a lot of terrible driving on the roads. I see drivers that are distracted on their phones all the time on main roads and highways. I see animals jump all around inside of a vehicle as it’s going down the road so it can stick its head out of the window. I see frustrated parents turning around to look into their backseats where their children are seated to what I can only assume is to get after them for misbehaving. There’s so many distractions for driver’s right now from technology to loud children. I think technology for our phones should be advanced enough by now to know that we are traveling down a road and the text feature and search features shouldn’t work unless the vehicle is traveling at 10mph or less. Every vehicle should have an entertainment feature in the backseat to distract children for a period of time while safely traveling to your destination.

Unfortunately I have personally experienced a bad accident in the passenger seat that totaled my mom’s car. It was in the middle of the day on a Michigan fall afternoon that we were traveling down a country scenic road to my cousin’s house to pick her up for a sleepover. We were passing by field after field and I was talking to my mom about something until I heard her yell “oh shit”. The next thing I recall I’m being screamed at by my mom to unbuckle my seatbelt and get out of the car. Several air bags had deployed inside the car, so there was smoke filling the car making it hard for me to see. I think I blacked out from the impact of hitting a very large deer that came running out of the field last minute and couldn’t be avoided. When I got out of the car with my mom we looked at the damage and was trying to comprehend what had just happened. The whole entire front end of the car was completely smashed in, the hood was crumpled up and unhinged standing straight up by the windshield. Somehow we both walked away with no injuries and my mom surprisingly kept her car in the correct driving lane on the road during the accident. My mom had to calm me down while we waited for a police officer and tow truck to show up. This accident was a very traumatizing experience for me and I can still vividly see it in my mind today.

Experiencing the accident with my mom just before I was old enough to start driver’s education training, taught me to always pay attention to my surroundings while I’m driving or a passenger in a vehicle. There was no way my mom could’ve seen that deer come out of the tree line by the road in time to do avoid the collision, but I’m much more cautious and drive slower than the speed limit while driving on country roads. I think I’m a better driver because of the accident I experienced and how it taught me to always be very aware of your surroundings while driving. Drivers are too distracted in this generation and people need to start focusing on driving their vehicles safely. Stop messing with your phones while driving! Don’t have a car full of friends that could be distracting to you while you’re driving, because you’re going to be trying to focus on the conversations going on in the car instead of focusing on driving safely. Lastly, technology needs to be held accountable some for creating distractions and not having safe modes on our devices as I had mentioned before, to help prevent accidents.