Knowing Safety to Save Lives

Allison
Gibson

Knowing
Safety to Save Lives

Every
year, we watch people around us pass away. Several of those tragedies
are a result of driving recklessly. Several People are not well
educated on the safety aspect of driving, and this needs to change.
People are dying every day due to a run stop sign, someone going a
little to fast, a lack of attention to the road, or simply a quick
text message. If we increase everyone’s knowledge about safe
driving, this will decrease the amount of deaths caused by reckless
driving. I believe simple steps such as showing the causality rate of
deaths caused by drunk driving, texting while driving, and other
things we view as minor inconveniences will open our eyes to how much
we are truly putting others lives at risk. I also believe hearing
someone’s story who has suffered greatly from an accident or has
lost a love one will allow people to see that they are not just
affecting themselves, but everyone around them!

I,
personally, have not been in a major accident, but have run off the
road and hit a mailbox. In the moment, it felt like I had no control
of anything around me, and it was me taking my eyes off the road for
a split second. My lanyard was hanging down and was on my leg, which
was tickling me. I took my eyes off the road very quickly to move it
and shoved it between my seat and the middle console. As this
happened, I felt the road under my tires leave, and dirt began to
take over. I tried to get back on the road, but at this point, I had
no control of the vehicle. I tried my best to swerve back onto the
road, and before I knew it, I was under a mailbox. After destroying
the mailbox, my car over corrected and I was now in the grass on the
other side of the road. I finally managed to regain control of my
car.

However,
being in this moment, I had no idea what to do, and that could have
cost me greatly had the incident been somewhere else. I believe
understanding what to do in dangerous situations can allow us to
become a better driver, as well as sharing our stories and things we
learned with others to help improve their driving skills. As my mom
always told me, “It’s not just you whose life you have control
over while you are behind the wheel, it’s every single person in
every car you pass.”