Hazards on the road.

Hazards on the road.

My 5th away game of my 2023 tennis season was nearing, and I had gotten into the car of my teammate to head to Hixson, Tennessee. Once we got on the road, she hit me with a question that left me dumbfounded:

“Do you mind if I text and drive?”

She posed this question to me while reaching for her phone simultaneously as she approached a turn. Stricken with worry, I realized that yet again, I had stepped into the car of a distracted driver.

Just a week prior, one of my other teammates drove me to an away game. She was constantly tailgating, speeding, texting on her phone—treating the vehicle like it was a toy—as if she didn’t have the lives of two different people in her hands. As a passenger, there isn’t much you can do; When I made her aware of my discomfort, her responses of “trust me, bro” and “don’t worry, I’ve never gotten into an accident” didn’t ease the worry in my mind.

The 30-minute ride was filled with silence.

Teen driving is a privilege easily handed to students after signing some legal documents, completing a written test, waiting 180 days, and finally, passing a road test. These roadblocks on the path to getting your license may seem like a lot of steps, but arguably, they are the cause of many accidents we see on the news today. Speeding, phone usage, distractions, and lack of awareness plague the teen drivers of today, resulting in countless incidents and injuries in every county of every state.

Many teens are eager to receive their license to drive their friends to the mall or around the city while lacking proper driving skills. Being a new driver and going straight into driving around friends—in busy areas—is a recipe for an accident/a close call.

Though illegal, it’s not stressed enough how dangerous it is for a new driver to carpool during their first year on the road. If Driver’s Ed classes were mandatory for students who are old enough to get their license, either through the school or the city, many kids would be more educated about the dangers of distracted driving. Taking a driver’s education class is extremely expensive, and is a privilege many parents and students can’t afford; Despite how important the information provided is to know.

Not only is inexperienced and distracted driving a danger to the children of many families all around us, but it is a danger to you, just as much as it is to me. With distracted drivers overtaking our roads and city streets, everyone is at risk of getting seriously injured or even killed. With this sentiment being a continuous issue for all drivers, action must be taken to protect our communities.

No matter where you might go, city streets or rural highways, it’s hard to take a single trip without seeing drivers make dangerous mistakes and decisions that can potentially harm the people around them. In 2019, the Tennessee Highway Safety Office reported that there were 13,925 crashes in Tennessee, all of which involved drivers 18 years or younger. In the same article, it states that while having other people in the car, teens tend to engage in risky behavior while driving due to the distraction that other people cause them. Many of my friends, including me, can testify to this point, admitting to feeling distracted while driving our friends around.

In one instance, not too long after I received my license, I was driving my friends to the local mall when I noticed my reaction time decreasing when breaking, and my awareness of the other cars around me substantially lowered.

This realization scared me.

Though I was privileged enough to attend a Driver’s Ed course, I still fell for the common trap of feeling like I had to drive my friends around to spend time with them. Especially as the first one of my friends to acquire their license, which leads to another problem that is common among teen drivers: Peer pressure.

When you’re the first one in the friend group to obtain your license, everyone, including yourself, will be excited. After all, so many more opportunities open up now that you can drive without your parent present. When making plans with your friends, you’ll start to notice people expecting you to drive now that you can. People will make plans revolving around your cooperation, and this leads to pressure on you to drive everyone. After all, you would be the reason your friends can’t hang out after school.

What makes peer pressure, distracted driving, inexperience on the road, and texting such a detrimental problem and a serious outrage across every community isn’t just how common it is, but how it’s an issue that can be fixed with proper funding and through spreading awareness. If there were more funding for schools, they could implement a mandatory class about Driver’s Ed and safety, not just a one-time lecture with a guest speaker. This way, students of any financial background would have the opportunity to get the proper education needed about driving in a proper learning environment.

All across the United States, driving is considered a necessity. It is commonly the only way for people to get to and from school or work; That being the case, it would only make sense to integrate a class that properly educates students on the dangers and safety precautions of driving. Given how widespread the issue has been, this decision to properly educate and inform students has the possibility of lowering the sheer number of motor vehicle accidents that involve children under 18.