How Driver’s Ed Saves Lives

Have you ever wondered how many people die each year from car accidents? Well, in Wisconsin alone, there are about 500 deaths each year from just car accidents. Being a safe and cautious driver helps prevent the risk of accidents and fatalities and it starts right from the beginning: driver’s education.

Driver’s education can easily help reduce the number of deaths in the U.S. as a whole for a number of reasons. One reason being that it helps educate teens about the dangers of driving and the importance of being safe on the road. Driver’s education gives students the skills they need to understand how to drive safely and navigate the roads on their own. Inexperienced drivers can easily cause so many accidents and deaths alone and I personally know of many accidents that have happened near me that young drivers and even drivers that are old enough to have their license caused.

Teens and even adults with no driving experience have to obtain some knowledge of the roads and how to drive. Without that experience or knowledge, most people wouldn’t know what to do when they get behind the wheel. Teens especially need that knowledge while they’re young enough and can easily understand the concepts of driving safely. I think that everyone, no matter what age, needs to get just a little education on how to drive because not knowing how to drive could cause many safety issues while on the road. Each state should require adults that don’t have their license to take a driver’s education course to ensure the fact that they know how to drive, what the rules are, and what to do in difficult situations.

In Wisconsin, about ten percent of all licensed drivers that were in fatal crashes were involving teens from age 16 to 19. Although teens do cause plenty of accidents, there are still many more crashes related to adults older than 19. There are hundreds of teens causing fatal accidents because of risky behaviors. Teens often do things while they drive that distract them from the road; a few of those include eating while driving, other people in their vehicle, speeding, and texting and driving.

Over 90% of all accidents happen because of simple mistakes and human errors. It is so easy to make small mistakes while driving, especially when they don’t have the education in the driving world. You never really realize how easy it is to get distracted while driving until it happens, and you see your life flash before your eyes. I know especially where I live in Wisconsin, there are hundreds of deer that get hit each year. I myself ran into one of these last summer and it totaled my car. There were a few factors that played into it; a few of them being that my music was too loud, the deer jumped in front of me right as I passed it, and it was a really bad time of night where my headlights did pretty much nothing. I definitely didn’t realize how distracted I was until it happened and now whenever I drive at that time of day, I always make sure to pay extra attention to my surroundings.

A lot of children didn’t get the privilege of driving at a young age like I did. I rode four-wheelers and things of that sort since I was a child. Once I got a little older, my mom allowed me to drive from our driveway to the end of our dead end road with me sitting on her lap. She controlled the pedals, and I would simply steer the vehicle. I always would get so excited to come home from swimming lessons in the summer because I knew she would let me steer the short drive from the stop sign to our driveway. As I got old enough to see over the steering wheel, she would let me drive the car down to the stop sign on my own and back up every single day. I also drove with her all over the place once I got my temporary license when I was fifteen. Once I got my license, I knew how to get almost anywhere within an hour drive of my house and how to navigate my way to those places without even needing directions. I live in a small town in Wisconsin and it is at least a half hour drive from my house to a Walmart so, my mom taught me at a young age to know where I’m going and how to get there safely.

Once I was fifteen, I started driver’s education in school. My teacher taught us how to drive, what all of the road signs signified, how to avoid certain situations while driving, and how to be a safe driver. We also had required driving time with our instructor so we could eventually get signed off to get a driver’s license. I remember a few instances where my fellow classmates were not very safe while driving and it definitely terrified me to be in the same car as them. I can think of a few times when I only had my temporary license and I was driving in a bigger city than I am used to and I didn’t quite know what to do in certain situations because I was never taught that yet. Most people, including myself, can definitely say that driver’s education is one of the reasons I am such a safe driver now and how I know what to do in certain situations while driving. Although I haven’t been driving for the longest time, I certainly know how to be safe behind the wheel.

All in all, driver’s education can save so many lives in the long run. Most people that get to the age of being able to drive just want to jump behind the wheel and have no clue what they are doing. We need the education to know how to drive safely and to understand the importance of safety while driving because it could utimately save so many lives around you.