If We Had Only Known…

Driving education and responsibility are the most important things any driver can have on their mind. Many people who don’t take driver’s ed courses typically aren’t told about the dangers of being on the road and aren’t prepared for all of the near misses they are likely to face while driving. A lot of drivers are never taught some of the smaller “less important” laws that some people think of as common sense or laws that are different from state to state or even country to country. Accidents happen so frequently and are often fatal with very few to no survivors. While not every accident causes fatalities, they can still be very expensive driving fails.

Many people, especially young people, aren’t taught how to avoid chaos on the road if they don’t take a driver’s education course. New drivers should be taught how to safely avoid cars that are driving on the wrong side of the road. New drivers should also be taught how to make a safe stop when something goes wrong with the car itself. So many people are thrown into worse situations because they were never taught how to properly handle a more dangerous situation. I hadn’t gone through driver’s ed in school or anywhere else but thankfully my mother is cautious about how her children and others on the road drive and she taught me how to safely avoid being in accidents, but many people don’t have the same kind of caution instilled into them like I had and it can be very dangerous.

Sometimes sticky situations are caused by a true lack of knowledge. I know that I couldn’t say which road safety laws differ from place to place. One law that I could say is different from place to place was the helmet law for motorcyclists. In Nebraska, you used to have to always wear a helmet while operating a motorcycle but in Kansas, for example, you didn’t need to wear a helmet. The helmet law has since changed but that’s the only law that differs from place to place that I know of. Even though sometimes people genuinely don’t know a certain law there’s plenty of situations where people simply drive recklessly.

I’ve had to maneuver my vehicle more times than I can count because of people around me driving recklessly. Just this week I’ve had to hit my brakes and move onto the shoulder of the road because I saw someone passing another vehicle in a no-passing lane, and I’m grateful that I saw them in time. I regularly see videos online of other drivers doing similar things and either causing accidents or near misses.

I’ve noticed that not many people take the responsibilities they have on the road seriously. I’ve seen dozens of people run red lights right in front of me once, but there was a time someone tried to run a red light from directly behind me also, which ended in multiple injuries, thankfully, none of them were serious. I was on the way to get my mother a present, my mom’s husband at the time was driving and all 4 of my siblings were in the vehicle when all of a sudden the screeching of tires rang out in the night, and BOOM! Everyone went flying this way and that, the seatbelts didn’t lock, and my sister flew forward, hit her head on the dash, and was knocked unconscious. The windshield was shattered, but we couldn’t figure out if it was the visor that hit the windshield or if it was my mom’s now ex-husband’s head. To make a bad situation worse, the person who hit us, drove away as fast as he could. We were left with a totaled vehicle, a couple of concussions, several cases of whiplash, and a totaled suburban. It showed how irresponsible some people can be on the road.

My family had to go through a very traumatic experience because of a lack of responsibility on the road. Seven years ago my father decided to leave the house while inebriated after he and my mother fought. In the morning a sheriff knocked on the door, everyone just assumed my dad was arrested but he had been in an accident and didn’t make it out. It tore the family apart. I still get infuriated whenever I find out someone was driving under the influence.

While I’ve been through the loss of a family member because of driving under the influence, minor accidents also happen regularly. About a month ago, down the street from my house, someone hit another person’s parked truck and fled the scene. Another hit-and-run accident I know of was when a friend of mine had finally saved up enough to get his dream car and he owned the car for about a month before someone hit and totaled the car, and to make his situation worse, his insurance wouldn’t cover it.

While not all motor vehicle accidents are severe they can still cause stress and injury. It should be mandatory to sit through a lecture talking about the dangers of reckless driving and driving while inebriated for high schoolers. It’s very important to teach new drivers about how dangerous being on the road can be and how to make the road a little safer if it can’t just be safe.