Safe Driving: A Life or Death Topic

Safe
Driving: A Life or Death Topic

Every
year, tens of thousands of people die in traffic accidents in the
United States. In many years this number outpaces U.S. combat deaths
in unpopular wars like Afghanistan or Iraq, and every two years it
surpasses the Vietnam War’s death toll. But behind these numbers
are human beings, with families, friends coworkers and jobs and their
own human lives, values that cannot be measured quantitatively. When
I was young, my role model and older cousin Tommy became one of these
statistics, and his death nearly tore his family apart. They’d
recently lost a daughter and the loss of their only son left them
with one daughter, months of sleepless nights and a stinging pain
that has remained for over a decade. He was just a few minutes from
arriving home safely, but because he did not practice safe driving,
he never made it home.

Tommy’s
death, and so many others, are entirely preventable. As a society we
need to come together and find real, working solutions to make
driving safer. While self-driving vehicles present promise, it is
irresponsible to wait on them to become widespread to make the roads
safe. Stricter laws regarding driving under the influence of alcohol
and drugs as well as distracted driving have helped, but we need to
strengthen these laws. But our strongest weapon against
driving-related deaths is drivers ed; the importance of these
programs cannot be overstated. By increasing the education that teen
drivers must receive and putting more funding towards these
institutions, as well as focusing on more advertising campaigns along
the lines of “click it or ticket” and “drive sober or
get pulled over,” we can ensure that all drivers have an
understanding of the rules of the road and the consequences of
breaking the law.

I
often see my family members or friends driving in an unsafe manner.
It is difficult and embarrassing to be the one to speak up, but I
always do, because it could save the lives of everybody in the car.
Many of my friends have lost their licenses for speeding, and I worry
that my parents will be ticketed for texting while driving or even
crash their car. They are not aware of how difficult it is to
multitask in a car, and how high the likelihood of disaster is; they
need drivers ed.

Better
drivers ed could have saved my cousin and thousands of others.
Had he been warned of the dangers of driving late at night, perhaps
he would never have gotten into his car, never fallen asleep at the
wheel and never hit that tree. Maybe the girls in the class above
mine would have been more careful coming around the corner and never
lost their friend. Perhaps we would all be a little bit safer, from
putting down our phones to obeying the speed limit, and we could make
deaths from traffic accidents nearly obsolete. I certainly hope that
I can one day live in a world like that.