Safer Roads Ahead

Incoming call: Dad Mobile. An innocent phone call.

Picking up the line — “Get your mom, I’ve been in a wreck.”

Grabbing my car keys and my mom in one fell swoop – we hopped in my 2007 Hyundai Sonata. Closing in on the closest intersection to our house, not 2 minutes from where we live, we saw the damage. Two cars, one being my dad’s. Debris on the ground. Flashing lights.

Directed by my mom, I pulled into the closest parking lot and was told firmly to stay there while she went out to find dad. Sitting in my car, alone, vulnerable to overthinking – I started to truly panic. The accident looked bad – but I really had no idea how my dad was. Did my mom leave me in the car to avoid me seeing him in a bad position? Slow tears started to roll, and my breathing became heavy and aspirated. I was trying to hold back, in vain.

Calming down, my mom walked back to the car a couple minutes later. She eased my worries by stating that my dad was okay – if a little banged up, and extremely shaken.

The reason for the accident? The other driver was on his phone.

Distracted driving results in over 400,000 accidents in the US every year. This staggering number is a statistic of avoidable accidents and is one of the leading causes of injuries in the US. Driving is a crucial part of life for most; however, it continues to be the most dangerous part of everyday life for an average person. This fact begs the question: what steps can we take to keep driving safe, on a personal level and on a large scale?

The first and most obvious solution to this problem is already in place: driving education. Many adolescents take the class every year to gain their license. Within driving education, there are multiple lessons about the dangers of driving; and what to avoid being safe behind the wheel. Various videos about drunk driving, texting and driving, and be aware of your surroundings are shown to educate students, in turn helping decrease driving deaths from these preventable causes.

However, there are some changes to driver education that could create an even safer environment on the roads. For one, when teenagers take drivers education, many view the class as a “necessary evil” to getting a driver’s license. Therefore, they do as little as possible to pass. If the climate around the classes could be changed, making it more interactive and engaging rather than lecture-based, it may help the lessons taught within to have more impact on the kids they are trying to teach. Secondly, as humans, we are proven to forget information that is not readily reviewed. I believe that brief drivers’ education classes should be necessary when renewing a license, to keep this crucial information in the front of our minds and hopefully reduce the number of driving-related deaths in the future.

Changing driver’s education is not the only step we can take to reduce the number of deaths related to driving. There are many outside factors that highly impact the number of vehicle accidents every year. For one, all distracted driving incidents are completely avoidable, specifically those related to phone distractions. To decrease these types of accidents, law enforcement needs to be stricter about their policies on pulling over drivers for being on their phones. On top of this, to eliminate the problem completely, phone companies could partner with law enforcement, making a “speaking-assistant” only mode; where the only actions on a phone can be controlled by voice-activated commands; like Siri or the Google Assistant.

Intoxicated driving is also a growing concern in driving deaths and injuries. As medicinal and casual use of drugs like alcohol and marijuana grow, it becomes concerningly common for drivers to get behind the wheel intoxicated. This leads to slower reaction time and bad decision-making, leading to many deaths. This must come to a stop to ensure the safety of all drivers on the road – whether the solution be higher police involvement or taking car keys at bars and pubs.

Lastly, cars should continue to be made with “top of the line” security measures to keep drivers safe if all these other measures fail.

In my own personal life, there are many actions that can be taken to make my driving safer – keeping myself and others safe. I struggle with distracted driving from time to time – justifying my actions by thinking “Oh I’m just changing the music” or “I’m just going to send this text really quick.” On top of this, I casually speed, not thinking of the consequences it may have if – God forbid – I got into an accident. I am working to end these dangerous behaviors, but it has taken active work on my end. As a society, I believe that we all must care enough about the life of each other to take steps to reduce driving-related deaths.