Danger Through Apathy

Learning how to drive was a terrifying experience for me. Weeks before I turned 14, I was having nightmares of crashes and runaway cars. I was so scared that I cried while my mother showed me how to put the car into drive. I was close to a full breakdown just driving down the block. I was terrified of driving because I thought that I would get into a crash or be the cause of one.

Due to my anxiety around driving, I always made sure that I was driving as safely as possible. I was following what my driver’s test told me to do and what my driving instructor had told me to do. I eventually felt like I could drive anywhere. As nothing bad happened over the months, my anxiety diminished almost completely, and I felt comfortable driving. But, as I got more comfortable with driving, I started to become more lax with the rules. It started slow, like eating breakfast on the way to school or checking my phone at a red light. Eventually, these “small” offenses started to get worse. I got an AUX cord, and my music was turned up very loud, I would start eating breakfast on the way to school every day, and I would stare at my phone every time my car stopped. Eventually, I started having problems. My loud music would block out the siren of an ambulance and I saw it before I heard it. Eating made a mess that caused me to almost rear-end someone. I started to miss when lights turned green and would get honked at. I started to drive immediately when I saw the light was green, thinking I may have waited too long there.

I vaguely knew that my driving habits were dangerous, but they weren’t that bad right? I wasn’t actively driving with my eyes glued to my phone or driving drunk, so I wasn’t as bad as the other drivers out there. I was still following the important rules like using my blinker and following the speed limit, so I continued.

After I got my full license, I started to drive with my friends in the car. Maybe a month after I had my full license, I was talking with my best friend at a red light right before the highway. The light turned green, and I started to drive into the intersection when my friend screamed at me to stop. I stopped and a second later I saw a blur pass right where my car was about to be. There was a car speeding down the ramp and back onto the highway that hadn’t stopped at their red light. My car was maybe 3 or 4 feet away from being T-boned. I almost killed myself and my friend because I was distracted. If I was alert, I would either have seen the car or have remembered to wait before immediately going into the intersection.

From then on, I knew that I had to change. But where should I start? Obviously, my distractions had to go. No more phones and no more eating. I could wait to enjoy those things until after I was stopped. However, these distractions had also ingrained bad driving habits into me. Habits like accelerating too fast after a light or stomping on my brakes. I needed something to help me break these habits. My Driver’s Ed course had taught me the laws and the necessary functions of driving but hadn’t gone into detail about how to actually drive safer. I decided to try a new course: defensive driving.

Once I had taken this course, I couldn’t believe that it wasn’t a required course to get a license. This course is what helped me become a better and safer driver today. The general stance of defensive driving stems from its name, driving defensively. You drive based on the premise that everyone else is driving offensively or dangerously and you have to react accordingly. Techniques like checking mirrors more often, leaving plenty of room between cars, do not drive right next to someone or in their blind spots, and wait at green lights for a second before going through it. This course not only went into details about how to drive safely but also showed the consequences of not following the techniques. For every technique that was taught, we were also shown a video of that exact scenario going wrong. This cemented into my mind the necessity of not only not being distracted while driving, but to be aware while driving.

Although the already required steps to getting a license (written exam, driving test, driver’s ed) are still necessary and helpful, more education will not only help people understand how to drive better, but will also create safer drivers. Education is an important part of driving and will reduce the number of people dying from car crashes.