Driving my way to victory!

Drivers education classes, almost every single driver on the road has had to go through these classes at one point or another. They teach you the ropes per say, the laws, how tickets work, how you can get your license revoked, how to be a responsible driver and so forth. Along with the education classes there is also usually “drive times” that further help young drivers go from good at driving, to great at driving. They give you the real-world situations to what you learned in the driver’s education classes, this will better prepare you to pass your permit test and not panic when confronted with a real-world scenario.

But does drivers’ education really help you become a better driver and reduce the number of accidents and deaths on the road? The short answer, yes absolutely. A lot of young drivers are usually not the most attentive or confident about driving. Confidence is a huge part of driving and if you are not confident about what you are doing, you will not do it to your full potential. If someone is not the most confident about driving, then they are more likely to freak out about something small and cause an accident which may lead to death for either party. That is where drivers’ education classes come in to help. When you take a drivers education class, they go over everything that you will ever need to know about driving. They also go over a variety of situations such as who to call when your car breaks down, what to do if you are involved in an accident, and most importantly how to prevent accidents. Things such as not running yellow lights, stopping at all stop signs, looking both ways many times before continuing into an intersection, are all many ways that drivers’ education teaches you how to prevent accidents. If you are knowledgeable about how to prevent accidents, then you are more likely to take those actions to stop accidents. Knowing how to prevent accidents is the first step to reducing them, and if you can prevent accidents, you can prevent the deaths that may come along with them.

Now drivers’ education is not the only way that we can reduce the number of deaths on the road, there are many other measures that society can take to reduce crash related deaths. One of the most common crashes on the news, in the police scanners, and that people see overall are motorcycle crashes. Now I know what you are thinking, oh it is not hard for a motorcyclist to get injured or die in a crash because they have nothing protecting them while riding. This is true, but a lot of the time, it is the people around the motorcyclist that cause the crash. For example, a parent is driving their baby home from a doctor’s appointment and the baby starts crying. There is a motorcyclist in front of the parent and a car in front of the motorcyclist. The parent is stopped at a red light, reaching back in the backseat trying to calm their baby down and figure out what is wrong, the parent out of the corner of their eye sees that the light has turned green, but it is the turn arrow for the other lane. The parent turns around, hits the gas in a panic, and crashes into the motorcyclist in front of him sandwiching him between the two cars and killing him. The motorcyclist was attentive, they were doing nothing wrong, the person behind them simply was not paying attention and jumped the gun on the green light. If we can emphasize the principal of giving motorcyclists 3 feet to the side and an ample amount of room back, we could reduce deaths like this from happening.

If we could also educate the public more about the dangers of operating a motorcycle this might help mitigate these deaths. Some chosen topics might include, do not split lanes to get around cars, just because you are on a motorcycle does not mean the speed limit does not apply to you, and reckless driving charges can also get charged to a motorcycle driver. Even though there is a ton of responsible and safe motorcyclists out there, there is a ton of reckless motorcyclists that die every year.

Another way that we could stop deaths on the road is to make sure that we have our cars up to date and that everything is working properly. This seems like an extremely basic and easy thing, but think about it what would you do if there was a mechanical error in your car? For example, what if your tire flew off while on the express way due to it not being inflated properly? Would you know what to do? Would you know that your tire was not inflated properly or that something was wrong with your car? Would you be able to navigate your vehicle to safety? I could tell you right now if my tire blew out on the highway I would be freaking out and would crash my car. This could lead to injuries and potentially the end of life. A lot of people, especially younger high school and college aged kids, do not know much about cars and when something is starting to go wrong. Some people are like me and follow the “turn up the music to drown out the weird clunking noise of my front bumper.” People like this will not get it fixed until something horribly bad goes wrong. Either that or people cannot afford to get their car fixed and will drive the car until it cannot drive another mile. If we can put an emphasis on having a quote on quote “rainy day fund” for your car, we could mitigate mechanical failure related crashes, which in turn, would decrease the possibility for death on the roads.

I can speak firsthand from seeing an accident happen right in front of me. I was about eight or nine years old, and I was heading to karate class. I was sitting at the light on the corner of central avenue and Talmadge trying to head into Ottawa Hills, only about 2 cars back from the light. Some woman in an Escalade kind of car was in the intersection trying to make a left, the light had just turned yellow, she saw an opening, so she went to turn onto central avenue. Well, the man who she thought was going to stop at the yellow light sped up and crashed into the side of her car. Turns out that man was in fact on his phone and in a split second saw the light turn yellow, sped up, and did not even realize that the woman was trying to make a left turn. There was shattered glass everywhere and my mom who was driving jumped out of the car, gave me her phone, and told me to dial 911 to get an ambulance on the scene in case anyone was hurt. Then she continued to tell me to stay in the car, so I was not in the way. I remember having a panic attack because I was a little kid I had no clue what was going on. So, I pulled myself together dialed 911 and told them where the crash was at and to send an ambulance because my mom told me so. Mom had gone to go check on the people in the crash and to help them navigate getting to safety. Once my mom was back in the car, she told me that everything was okay, everyone was fine, and that they were going to call a tow truck and some backup to get the intersection clear again. We then started to backup our car, leave the scene, go around the long way, and get me to karate class only about 15 minutes late. Surprisingly about half of my class was late because of the exact same accident and they all were as shook up as I was.

Some steps that I personally can take to be a better driver is to keep my phone in my pocket or in an isolated area of my car while driving. Usually, I keep my phone in my pocket or my cup holder, but that is not really the best place for it since it is easily accessible. There is a part of my car in the dashboard that lifts up in order to reveal a secret compartment where I keep my proof of insurance, my important car papers, and an emergency multi-tool in case I get into an accident and need to smash out a window or cut my seatbelt to get to safety. I should really be putting my phone with all my papers and multi-tool because it will be out of sight and out of mind. This will also keep me from getting fined for having my phone out whilst driving. In my home state of Ohio, you can get fined up to $500 and have your license suspended for having your phone out while driving. I do not know about anyone else, but I do not have $500 laying around plus money for an Uber to get to work everyday for 90 days. It is just better off for everyone, myself included, if the phones stay off and out of sight while in the car. We should not be wasting money on things that can be prevented. If people are educated on just how much money they could lose by being on their phones, I feel like the phone usage behind the wheel would go down drastically.

Another step that I can take to be a better driver is to not get distracted by whatever else is going on off the road. For example, when I drive to school every morning there is a dog that walks down Main Street right before I get to the light at Convent boulevard. This dog is so cute! It is a black and white doodle of some sort, and she is just the cutest thing, and being the dog lover I am, I look forward to seeing this dog every day on my ride to school. There is also another dog that walks at the end of the day when I am leaving school. This dog I usually see when I am driving down Silica drive and it is an adorable little bulldog mix named Charlie. Charlie is particularly dangerous for me simply because of where he walks. Silica drive has a couple nasty turns that in the winter can take out a car if you take it just a hair too fast. Couple this with the backing up of 1200 students trying to leave Northview High School at 2:30 in the afternoon. There have been a couple times where I have either been coming around the curve and hit the curb because I was paying too much attention to Charlie, or I have almost rear ended the person in front of me and caused an accident because of Charlie’s cuteness. Now there are two ways that we can fix this problem. Solution number one, Charlie decides to either walk at a different time or a different place. Solution number two, I need to pay more attention to what is in front of me and then oogle over Charlie once I am at a complete stop. The answer is obvious, I am the thing that needs to change, not Charlie.

A step that I think everyone has experienced at one point of another is the wonderful thing called road rage. Sometimes things in the moment are a lot more heated than what they are, and I feel like road rage falls under that category of making a big deal out of nothing. For example, my father used to be a truck driver and would go to the Cincinnati area every day and drive back. I remember I would call him after I got out of school asking if I needed to get anything ready for dinner and 90% of the time he would say what he needed to say, but in the middle of his sentence would yell at an old person because they were simply going too slow in the far left lane. My father among other people (myself included) experience road rage on a semi daily basis. If we want to make the roads safer, I personally feel like we need to stop getting so worked up over someone going too slow, or someone cutting us off during a lane change. It would make for a lot less tension if we as a society did not get worked up over the trivial things. A lot of people also have driving anxiety because some people have extremely bad road rage and are reckless on the roads. If we can educate people on all the downsides of getting mad over petty things on the road and evoking road rage, I believe it would make the roads a safer place. Think about it, people have less anxiety on the roads, there would be less tension, people therefore would be more comfortable and confident driving, and there is less crashes on the road because everyone is calm and collected. It is a win win! We can all live in serendipity on the roads and be at peace with our driving!