Name: Jordan Kiefer
From: Ovilla, Texas
Votes: 0
Making
the Safest Decisions in the Midst of Transportation Transition
Ovilla
Christian School
25
July 2019
The automobile has had a great effect on the world since the first
mass produced automobile was created in 1920. Looking at the car
industry’s growth over the years directly represents the state of
economy of many countries. Today, cars are still the most widely
accepted form of transportation in the world. They are so common that
you can not go anywhere or do anything without seeing them or their
effect on society. As the world around us changes, so do our cars.
Better engines are built, fuel alternatives are discovered, and gas
prices fluctuate. The world is changing, car designs are changing,
and even the roads that they are driven on are changing. However,
there is one thing that has not changed since the creation of the
car: offensive driving. The real problem with drivers throughout the
years has not been that they are necessarily bad at driving. People
in general usually will call themselves good drivers. The problem
with good drivers is that good drivers die every day in accidents.
You may have good control of the wheel, stop completely at every stop
sign, and drive the speed limit, but that simply makes you a good
driver. To stay safe and alive on the road, you have to be more than
a good driver.
Driving through
a four-way intersection, considering that you are a good driver, you
stop at the stop sign and make sure that you are good to go, and then
accelerate through the intersection. Many people do this all the time
thinking that because they have the right of way, they are safe to go
through the intersection when it is their turn. Not only is this very
wrong, it is very dangerous. Say you are stopped at a stop sign and
you do your usual routine. You look to your left and right twice and
see a truck pulling up to the stop sign perpendicular to yours, and
then go straight ahead. At the same time you go through, the truck,
going twenty over the speed limit, is still coming from the right and
doesn’t see the stop sign. The truck crashes into you at full
speed, killing the person in the passenger seat and possibly you and
totaling your car in the process. The last thing that ran through
your head before the impact was “I have the right of way, so it is
safe to go.”. This is a dangerous idea that many drivers have in
their minds when they are driving, and it causes them to ignore
things that should not happen under driving laws. The problem lies in
the fact that things that shouldn’t happen happen all the time,
even to good drivers. Distracted drivers are not paying attention to
what the laws for driving say that they should do. Drunk drivers are
the best examples of distracted driving, but there are many more
types of distracted driving, and accidents are called accidents for a
reason. Sometimes, it is neither person’s fault and just a pure
accident.
The automobile
industry is shifting gears. We are approaching an era where things of
late science fiction are becoming reality, and the automobile
industry is not falling behind in the constant pursuit of the future.
Electric cars have been around for quite a bit at the time that this
essay is being written and are slowly becoming more affordable and
widespread. With rising gas prices and the fear of running out of
oil, people are flocking to get their electric cars…right? Not
exactly. The world right now is in a state of transition between
eras; between more mechanical and more technological. This state of
transition in the automobile industry is best represented by the
hybrid car. The hybrid car today is called a gasoline-electric
hybrid, meaning that these types of cars will take both gasoline and
electric. They have better gas mileage than a strictly gasoline car
and have significantly less emissions. The hybrid vehicle is an
attempted compromise between a gasoline fueled car and an electric
car. The problem with electric cars is that even though they produce
almost zero emissions, they do not travel very far and can not go
very fast. This will definitely change in the future, when we have
the technology to get over the obstacles that make a fully electric
vehicle not a feasible transportation option. Something else that
will come in the near future is self-driving cars, which are already
being tested and produced.
At this point,
you may be thinking, “Why is all of this information important for
drivers today?”. This information is very important to those who
are driving today and those who are about to begin because it shows
that safety is becoming something that we are going to have to focus
even more on. Offensive drivers will not fare well in this dangerous
transition of transportation. One reason for this is that as this
transition is underway, electric cars will be slower than gasoline
fueled ones. Impatient offensive drivers will put themselves in more
dangerous situations than usual because of this, increasing the risk
of a crash. Offensive drivers will also not be cautious around cars
that rely heavily on self- driving functions once they become more
widespread and will put themselves in dangerous situations there as
well. Driving today is not completely safe by any means, and
offensive drivers make it even less safe when they are reckless or
assume that they have the right of way in many situations and do not
stop to think about what will happen otherwise. As electric and
self-driving cars become a widespread reality, it becomes even more
imperative that we teach new drivers to get themselves out of the
thoughtless ideas that make driving dangerous today, so that we can
keep these drivers safe in the midst of this transition of
transportation.
