Guarded

“Honey, are you okay, do you need to pull over and have me drive?” asked the woman sitting in the backseat with the five month old baby. “No, I am good, I just needed to close my eyes for one second”, he replied. The woman replied with “Okay, was just making sure. I am going to try to fall back asleep. Wake me up if you get sleepy.”

There comes a time that once you have been driving for so long, it comes as second nature. You do not think about the stop sign coming up, your foot just automatically goes to the brake and you start slowing down until you come to a complete stop. You get into the habit of looking at all your mirrors to see if there is anything odd happening around you or in case you need to switch lanes. All these elements that were once scary and overthought are now acquired behavior. You forget all the important things that you learned when you first began to drive. You forgot the fundamentals and how they keep you safe. Drivers education shows you the basics; For example, you learned how to position your hands on the wheel, what used to be positions 10 and 2 are now 9 and 3 or 8 and 4. These positions are to help you keep control and stability of the wheel. As you got more comfortable driving, you probably started using only one hand in order to free up your other hand; whether that be to eat a snack, text on your phone, change the song on the radio, or even put on makeup. Not only does driver’s education show you hand positions, but it also encourages you to follow the speed limit. When it comes to speed, every 1 percent increase is a 4 percent increase in fatal crashes. This then leads me to seatbelts. Seat Belts can save your life; from the years 2008 to 2012, seatbelts saved an estimated 63,000 lives in the U.S. The list of drivers fundamentals can go on, these basic rules should be an everyday practice.

Motor vehicle accidents account for approximately 36,000 lives yearly, except for during the pandemic when the fatalities rose 7.2 percent, making the fatalities approximately 38,680. These accidents occurred due to impaired driving, speeding, and failure to wear a seat belt. Impaired driving can result from drinking alcohol and driving or being sleep deprived. When you get behind a wheel, you expect that person to be coherent and prepared, because anything can happen on the road. Being impaired slows your reaction times. So when you think about all these possibilities, what can you do to reduce deaths on the road? You can stop being distracted by other drivers and get off our phones, you can stop speeding because you are running late for work, and you can get adequate sleep.

There is never a guarantee that we will not be involved in an accident but the measures I mentioned above certainly lower our chances. My brother was in a car accident this year, approximately 4 months ago. He decided to go to the gas station a few miles from our house to get some snacks. He stated that he was sleepy, but he was also craving some snacks so decided to go despite that. On his way back home, he fell asleep behind the wheel and crashed into a tree straight on. He called me and asked if I could come assist him, emergency services were notified and we stayed on scene until he was cleared to go. His car was totaled and he was unable to go back to work for a few days due to some minor injuries. This was a small scare, but the situation could have escalated quickly if he had hit another vehicle.

There are many ways you can practice safe driving. Our community can build advanced safety systems which require vehicles to have monitors that alert when the vehicle is too close to an object or that helps us see past blind spots. You can ask our community for more round-abouts because they increase safety by 70-90 percent. You can acquire more speed bumps and have narrow lanes that make it easier for pedestrians to pass and usually persuade more cautious driving. You can live in reality knowing that it can happen to us. You can hit a kid racing through the parking lot at Walmart because we got distracted looking for a parking space. You can crash into a tree, building, or into a ditch because you decided to drive while mentally impaired. You can be involved in a collision or hit a pedestrian because answering a text message could not wait a few more minutes. All these scenarios can be avoided if you put away your distractions. You are driving a 1 ton vehicle, the least you can do is practice taking care of yourself and others around you.

Works Cited

“2020 Fatality Data Show Increased Traffic Fatalities During Pandemic.”, NHTSA, NHTSA, 03 June 2021, https://www.nhtsa.gov/press-releases/2020-fatality-data-show-increased-traffic-fatalities-during-pandemic. Accessed 23 November 2021.

Bartlett, Jeff. “6 ways to avoid a car accident.”ConsumerReports,04 April 2015, https://www.consumerreports.org/cro/news/2015/04/6-ways-to-avoid-a-car-accident/index.htm. Accessed 23 November 2021.

Luke, Nikita. Sharpin, Anna. “8 Ways to Reduce Road Fatalities Using the “Safe System” Approach.” TheCityFix, 14 January 2019, https://thecityfix.com/blog/8-ways-to-reduce-road-fatalities-using-the-safe-system-approach-nikita-luke-anna-bray-sharpin/. Accessed 23 November 2021.

Pinola, Melanie. “How to Become a Better Driver.”Lifehacker,14 October 2019, https://lifehacker.com/top-10-ways-to-become-a-better-driver-1596820145. Accessed 23 November 2021.