Imagine
yourself driving on a beautiful Saturday afternoon. The sky is blue,
with a few fluffy white clouds in the sky, the sun shines. The
joy in the air is met by the soothing beats of "Hey, Jude".
Suddenly, a "PING!" disrupts both the music and your
driving focus. Your world spins. The sky is on fire. The white clouds
are obscured by gray smoke. In this scenario, the urge to check your
phone was stronger than your instinct to be safe, because you decided
to ignore the one thing Drivers Ed emphasizes the most:
"Don't Text and Drive". Drivers
Education was specifically designed to keep people from getting into
accidents, with a simple progression of steps for getting out of
tricky situations. Before passing the permit test, most people don’t
know that if you start skidding, you need to take your foot slowly
off the brake and keep the wheel in the direction you want to go. Or
if you park downhill, your wheels should face towards the curb, so if
your brakes malfunction, you roll into the curb and not downhill.
Without education, people get into accidents for the simplest
reasons, all of which could have been avoided if they just paid
attention in Drivers Ed.
People
often have short attention spans. We zone out during the mandatory
educational driving videos because, frankly, they’re boring. A
solution is to target videos to specific demographics. Then teens
would be more inclined to pay attention. Another improvement could
involve mandatory permit tests before license renewals. People tend
to forget both the basics and what to do in extreme situations.
Retaking the permit test provides a reason to review laws that
drivers probably haven’t looked at since they were 16. Small things
like the “Right of Way” laws can make a big difference.
I
was 15 years old when my grandfather got into a car accident. A
motorcyclist ran into him at a roundabout, it was the middle of the
night. As we later found out, the motorcyclist didn’t even have a
license - and no drivers ed at all. Many similar scenarios
can be avoided if both parties are properly educated to drive.
Luckily no one got hurt, but that isn’t always the case. Due to his
lack of education, the motorcyclist could have gotten seriously
injured, or even worse, killed. As I mentioned earlier, Right of Way
laws are a small, but very important part of Drivers Ed.
Being
a Defensive Driver is the best way to be safe on the road. Keeping a
safe distance, avoid speeding, and make a pessimistic assumption that
other people don’t know the laws. This is rather grim, but
overestimating the other drivers’ skills is a sure way to get into
an accident. Any advice I would give people would be to follow the
above steps, know the laws, and never mess with their phones while
driving.