In The Driver’s Seat

Brooke Kiesling

10/15/2020

In The Driver’s Seat

Finally being sixteen, fifteen even, is both exhilarating and scary. Scary, more so, for the parents. Before you can get 10 and 2, you’ll need to enroll into a driver education course. It is crucial that each driver goes through this course to get the knowledge required to operate a vehicle safely and efficiently.

Any driver can agree that people can be crazy on the road. Whether it’s not using a blinker, speeding, drunk driving, texting while driving, cutting people off, or swerving, all of these put other lives at risk. By taking a drivers education course you can gain a better understanding of the do’s and don’ts of driving. The more people with this knowledge, the better chance we have to reduce the number of deaths while driving each year.

There are steps that can be taken to reduce the number of deaths due to driving. Parents can enroll their child into a drivers education course and instill good driving habits. Practice what you preach. More than likely your child, at some point in their childhood, is watching you drive. If you have bad habits your child could pick up on those later in life. Phones, along with other forms of distracted driving, are a major factor in a lot of accidents. It is important that we set an example to all drivers and simply put the phone away. The text message or notification is not more important than your life or the lives of others.

Witnessing a car accident is a very unsettling feeling. You feel nearly helpless. I haven’t been in a car accident myself, but I know of people who have. Those incidences have ranged from distracted driving, black ice, view obstruction, being in the line of travel of another accident, and speeding. Some accident factors are out of our individual control. If we can prevent possible accident factors, we should try each day to do so. Looking down for even a second can cost you your life or someone else’s life. The things we learn in drivers education may seem like common sense and simple to follow, but so many people oversee these. It doesn’t take much for an accident to occur, so it is important we drive defensively.

Even if I consider myself a safe and defensive driver, there are always areas I can improve on. I can predict my stopping distance better by choosing to slow down sooner. I can even improve how I turn corners. Each time I drive I can practice driving a little better in each area I feel like needs some sprucing up. I can help others by reminding them to drive safely each time we leave school and observe the way they drive.

To conclude, it is crucial as drivers, students, and adults that we remember the importance of safe driving and becoming defensive drivers. One by one, course by course, we can gradually decrease the amount of deaths due to driving by driving safe and driving right.