Think and Drive

As a driver of 5 years, (coming into 6), I have seen many different types of drivers. From young drivers to old drivers, from able bodies to those with disabilities. However, there was one common thing that happened between them. There were always accidents occurring regardless of who was driving. Some of the accidents were not so bad as they only scratched their cars, but others were devastating. For those in the latter, unfortunately, death was not avoidable. But how could this have been avoided? That’s where the importance of driver education comes into play. When one first learns to drive, you must go through multiple tests to be eligible to drive. They must go through a permit test as well as driving tests to pass. This is just the start of the education process, however. Many will say that this is all that you need to achieve, however, I believe that this is not all. Another driver education that comes is when you receive a ticket of a certain degree. Depending on how bad it was, you could either get your license revoked, or you may have to go through training and testing once again to be eligible to drive again. But why is this education so important? These trainings and testing were not made to inconvenience the driver and slow their process in being able to drive, but instead to protect the driver as well as other drivers from accidents that could be irreversible. Some of the steps that could be taken to reduce the number of deaths related to driving would have to be the prevention of reckless driving. Most drivers, when busy, would go about doing reckless driving. They would weave in and out lanes to be even a second faster while ignoring all other warnings of danger that could happen. They would also drive faster than oncoming traffic and thus speed. In this sense, I think there are some good measures to counter these kinds of drivers. In Korea, they have things on the highway where cameras would be in a start area and end area where they would time how long it would take for the cars to go from one side to the other. Since they already have the time it should take for cars moving at the speed limit, if you get there faster, they know and would send a ticket to the car owner. In this way, we would be able to reduce the amount of reckless driving and speeding because now they have a consequence that they would have to deal with that does not include the death of them or the death of other drivers. Another step that could be taken is the importance of using blinkers as this is one of the big reasons as to why many cars get into accidents. Since many people dislike using their blinkers, others are unable to know if they are trying to get in causing unforeseen accidents. With just something as simple as using the blinkers, we would be able to reduce the number of accidents because we are letting others know to be careful cause the driver is going to merge. I have personally not experienced being in a car accident, but my sister got into a car accident due to the reckless driving of another driver. The driver, young and reckless, did not turn on their light at night and tried to run a red light because they didn’t want to wait. Because he did not have the lights on, even though my sister looked both ways before going, she could not see the car as the color of the car was black. Then, without even a warning, she got t-boned (which is where the car hits perpendicular to the other car) on the passenger side. Luckily, besides a few body aches and a ruined car, she was able to come out unscathed. The other driver was also safe. However, if that car decided to come from the other side, my sister would not have been as lucky and probably would have lost her life. So how do we avoid these kinds of situations? The answer is it’s not possible. Just because we do all we can to be good drivers, it doesn’t mean that we will be able to avoid accidents. However, we can try to be safer drivers by doing things that others find inconvenient. Things such as just using the blinkers or allowing the cars to merge instead of trying to pass them because you don’t want to be behind them can lower the accident rates. Other things that could allow us to be safe are not using our phones while driving, or one of the biggest ones, drunk driving. If you know you will be drinking, being responsible by finding someone else to drive you or using uber to take you home would keep many safe. There are many steps that would lower the accident rates and keep drivers safe in the road, however, this only applies to those who truly wish to keep others safe. Those who see accidents but continue to drive recklessly will continue to be a danger to those on the roads. However, those who try to drive safer by doing small actions that help others would help the road be safer for everyone.