Driver’s Education

Statistics taken from 1970 show that there was a fatality rate of 26.8 deaths per 100,000 people per year dying in car accidents. More recent data suggests in 2022 that fatality rate has dropped precipitously down to 13.8 per 100,000 dead. This is great news to hear because it shows we as a society have made some big strides toward lowering car accident fatalities in our country.

The drop in annual car fatalities is often attributed to advances in safer technology, seat belt laws, the oil embargo of 1973, enforcement of a national speed limit, and driver’s education classes. I will now go into details of each of these.

There have been many advances in safer technological advances for example the braking systems in modern vehicles are much safer with better failsafes and redundancy. The power steering on newer vehicles, air bags, lane detection software have all improved the safe driving experience just to name a few.

Seat belts have not always been present in vehicles nor have they always been worn by drivers/passengers. You can find many videos around the time when they made seat belt laws and the people interviewed believed it to be a massive overstep to be policing if they wore a seat belt or not. The American freedom-loving spirit doesn’t care about safety for themself nor others. We just love our fast cars and open roads. Seat belt laws and fines along with public service campaigns such as “ click it, or ticket” have helped change the public perception. Since implementing these laws car accident fatalities have gone down and the seat belts help mitigate the injury from car accidents.

The oil embargo of 1973 was done by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) who decided to place an embargo on all of the countries who supported Israel during the Yom Kippur War. This embargo made oil prices skyrocket for Americans. The oil barrels went from $3USD per barrel to $12USD. This economic disaster that hit the West was the most severe since the Great Depression. The consequences of the oil embargo are still felt even to this day.

In 1974 President Nixon signed into law the National Maximum Speed Limit law which set the limit to 55 mph. This was in direct response to the 1973 oil embargo. This law was repealed and brought back to the states’ discretion in 1995. This law was put into effect in the effort to save on oil and gasoline because of the severe economic strain put in place during 1973.

Driver’s education classes have existed in some form or another since the early 1920’s shortly after the first Ford Model T’s hit the market. With this new technology invented and eventually hitting market saturation many people did not know how to drive these new vehicles. Before market saturation of automotives pedestrians would walk the streets without a care. Around the year 1928 the automotive industry created a marketing campaign to shift the public perception about traffic. The roads are for cars. Pedestrians used to call reckless drivers “jay-drivers.” “Jay” is an old midwestern slang term for “idiot, hick, or rude.” The campaign included usage of a new term “jaywalker”, Boy Scout pamphleting, and municipal ordinances. In the effort to shift the public perception such that cars dominate the roads and pedestrians were stupid and to blame.

A study by The University of Nebraska-Lincoln in 2015 found that driver’s ed classes had reduced the amount of serious or fatal car crashes by 24%. While the AAA foundation says that classes reduce it as well but not by as much, only 4.3%. Classes can also teach the dangers and consequences of unsafe driving. The study found that the best ways to keep teenage drivers safe on the road is driver’s ed, implementing graduated driver licensing laws, reducing teens’ access to drugs and alcohol, and increased seat belt usage.

Obviously 13.8 per 100,000 is still bigger than the ideal number of 0 per 100,000 dead from car accidents. We must be realistic and realize that it is impossible to get to 0. We live in the real world and have to be realistic. As long as people will drive cars you will always have some amount of car accident fatalities. So putting people in driver’s ed is a good idea for lowering the amount of car accidents or fatalities. With this in mind maybe we could make strides into making drivers ed more affordable or free to the average consumer or mandatory and state sponsored for all future drivers who plan to sit behind the wheel.