Driving is important

Driving education is important, because it helps equip people with skills or strategies to drive and get to their destinations safely. Deaths have decreased from 1975 to 2020, so the use of driver’s education has seemed to make an impact in reducing deathly crashes. Educated drivers lead to safe roads. In my personal experience, I attended the education course and received my driver’s license during the Covid pandemic. As a result, for safety reasons, I was not required to take the driver’s test at my local DMV. So, for me reading the materials and participating in class were very important for my  driving education. Even so, I think I was prepared well for the world of driving, with my parents’ tutelage and my instructors’ rules of what to do sometimes crossing my mind when getting into my car. But if during the Covid lockdown I was just handed my licence without attending a Driver’s Education class, I would have been worse off and would have made the roads less safe.

Deaths are still very high when related to driving. For example, in 2020, fatal crashes were 40,000 fatal crashes. While I don’t think it is possible to completely prevent fatal car accidents entirely there are some steps that we can take reduce them. One step could be increasing the punishment for being pulled over for either driving under the influence or distracted driving (using a mobile device in a way that would impair sight on the road). Because if we make the punishment severe enough people will have to pay more attention to the rules and will reduce the number of crashes related to those things. One thing I also notice is that some roads may have dim lights, or the road might be not designed properly for safety. Some highways cause a lot of crashes because of the ease of access or road conditions impair drivers and force them to make bad decisions. Taking those two things into account we could potentially reduce crashes by making roads safer to drive on and making them easier to navigate to potentially reducing a driver’s stress to either see the road or understand where to turn or if they can merge or not. Automobile manufacturers could also add enhancements to make vehicles safer, like potentially enforcing airbags, required turn signals, and the Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) to adopt collision detection and braking systems. While everyone might not be able to afford a car that has these features, enforcing these type of safety features will hopefully force companies to make cars affordable so that the older, less safe cars are on the road less and less.

Unfortunately, several of my family and friends have experienced being in a car accident, luckily none of them have been fatal. The culprit for most was irresponsible driving. The crashes happened because the drivers were not wary or aware of their surroundings either having a phone in their face or being distracted from having their eyes on the road. So potentially in future drivers’ educational courses we could teach more heavily the importance of only using your phone for GPS or a phone call and to set other phone activities up before you drive. And even create exponential consequences for multiple phone violations. This could help drivers keep their attention on the road reducing crashes.

Some steps that I can take to become a safer driver is for sure use my phone less, whether I’m trying to get my music app to play or texting – it is not safe to the people around me. I have improved at this as I try to do everything I need to before starting to drive, keeping my attention on the road and reducing the chances to hurt myself and others. Another step I can take is when I am driving with my immediate family, friends, or relatives, I can set the example by being a safe driver and not using my phone, speeding, eating, etc. This way I can hopefully influence them to drive like I do and make the roads safer one driver at a time.

In my short time of driving, when I am driving by crashes, I wonder “Why did this happen?” This causes me to really try and become a safer driver if I want to eventually be driving around my future family and kids. Driving education is definitely a major factor to keep the roads safe but laws that regulate drivers could help the roads stay safer.