Importance of Driver Education and Safety

I believe that driving is an essential part of everyday life, driving provides convenient transportation and mobility. Although everyone drives, that doesn’t mean that people drive safely; deaths involving vehicles take thousands of lives every year and hundreds every day. This is why proper driver education is crucial. I believe that driver safety and education plays a very important role in reducing the numbers of vehicle fatalities but as a young driver we may not see the importance of drivers safety and education but we never know how much life can change in the blink of an eye. I have lost many peers in the four years I have been in high school to driving incidents, some their fault and some not. I believe proper training and education doesn’t just teach us the necessary skills to drive safely but it also equipped us with safe and responsible driving habits that we can share with others, lowering their chance of being in a car accident.

Drivers education does more than just teach you the rules and regulations of the road it also how to be aware and the importance of defensive driving, for example is you notice someone is tailgating you or driving really close to your rear bumper you can pull into the other lane or pull over to let them pass you doing this you could have just avoided a huge accident that could have taken someone’s life. Driver safety is something so simple that can have drastic effects. It is too easy to get into a car accident and take someone’s life because a driver was being reckless or was not informed about certain customs to follow while driving. Additionally driver’s education highlights the importance of following driving laws: reckless driving,speeding, driving under the influence, and driving while impaired are just a few laws that are established to ensure our safety but sadly people continuously break them leading to disaster. A well established driver’s education system, and class will do a great job at teaching young drivers early about the dangers in driving and the need for safety and responsibility while on the road.

As recently mentioned I have witnessed 3 horrible accidents in the past 2 years involving a vehicle, the first was a horrible ATV accident in the spring of 2023 that claimed the life of Jessica Hollday, the death of Jessica shook the whole town of Ramseur, Jessica was beloved by all and hearing of the terrible accident affected everyone as a junior her close friends were devastated when graduation came around and were not able to walk across the stage with her. The second accident I have witnessed was Kaliegh Wilson thankfully she survived the accident but there were moments where people were unsure if she was going to make it. Lucky Kaleigh has made a full recovery and is living her life to the fullest at App State although Kaleighs accident didn’t have the devastating ending like Jessica’s Kaliegh sadly was not able to physically walk across the stage at graduation but she did not let this affect her and she still lives her best life. The last and most recent accident was during the summer of 2024 this accident claimed the life of two students Mario Lara and Tyler Franklin put two more students Sara Edwards and Macie Manness in extensive care for weeks. Although only the two girls survived these horrible accidents they continue to live their lives to the best of their abilities. I find it heartbreaking that just in my small town of Ramseur we have taken loss after loss due to vehicles.

There are many ways we can reduce the number of car fatalities, I believe the combination of stricter enforcement and education will decrease the number of vehicle related deaths drastically. I will admit that I sometimes go over the speed limit a little bit and have witnessed people on the roads racing each other while driving down the road. This maybe an unpopular opinion but if the punishment for reckless driving and speeding was more brutal than the fear of the punishment would be enough to reduce the numbers a little bit but you would think that the knowledge of you having the power to kill yourself or someone els with the vehicle you are driving would cause enough fear to make people drive responsibly but sadly thats not the case. The goal isn’t to make people afraid to drive it is to make people aware of the true dangers, while young drivers might be really unaware of the dangers because they have never experienced the fear almost getting into an accident and I think it shouldn’t take a close encounter with death to make someone realize the true danger of something so the combination of more harsh punishments and better public awareness the number of vehicle related accidents could decrease.

In conclusion Vehicles have taken too many lives and especially young lives. Driver education is important in reducing the number of vehicle related deaths by giving drivers the right information and the right amount of punishment for breaking the life saving laws will do enough to save all of the lives that are to be lost to car accidents.