Name: AKSHAT JAIN
From: Vancouver, British Columbia
Votes: 0
Drivers ed is extremely important as it helps us to build safe
driving habits by educating about traffic laws and symbols. This
awareness makes us vigilant drivers who are less likely to violate
the rules ,thus reducing the overall probability of accidents. The
drivers ed also serves as an important pathway to understand
not only the precautions required to avoid driving accidents but also
the post- accident measures like how to use adequate first aid to
avoid the conversion of accident into death. Another important area
where drivers ed can help is to train young drivers to avoid
distractions like texting, posting on social media, taking calls by
showing the video testimonials from the people who suffered through
accidents due to such distractions or giving a simulated gamification
experience of such situations through VR headsets at physical centers
which all together tries to instill safe driving habit of avoiding
distractions. According to a study performed by researchers at
University of Nebraska – Lincoln published in 2015 to understand
the impact of drivers ed, they studied 150,000 teen drivers
over eight years and found that drivers ed significantly
reduces crashes and traffic violations among new drivers. The young
drivers without drivers ed are 75 percent more vulnerable to
get a traffic ticket, 24 percent more likely to be involved in an
injury and 16 percent more probable to go through an accident.
A lot of measures
in terms of stricter and heavy penalties than current ones for using
mobile phones, over-speeding, overtaking in the wrong direction can
be taken to reduce the accidents. But this alone would not be enough,
and we need to tackle the root cause which is essentially changing
the mindset of the people and the way we interact with distractions.
People need to put off their lax attitude when doing basic
precautions like avoiding handsfree and phone usage while driving.
One great incentive for them could be some scheme from insurance
companies, that helps them to reduce their insurance premiums if they
have very less ticket penalties throughout the year. This thing could
benefit both the parties – the insurance companies as well as the
consumers. Technology is both a boon and a bane, it really depends on
how you use it. There are a lot of provisions in latest mobile and
sensor technology which can detect whether the car is in motion or
not and then accordingly tell the user on other side to wait for a
call back using a pre-recorded message. The future technology of IOT
(Internet of Things) based smart car ecosystem adds an extra layer of
security by adding sensors that control the speed of your car
automatically on highways by adjusting it as per surrounding and
going into self-driving mode if it detects that the driver is getting
drowsy and all such benefits. There is another measure which is more
like mitigation of an accident than its prevention. Technology can
provide with some GPS based mobile apps that can navigate you quickly
or put you in touch with the nearest hospital so that the victim is
treated well in time to avoid any unfortunate consequences.
I had the
experience of being involved in a car accident recently when we were
driving back from a party and my friend who was driving the car got
so indulged in making an Instagram story that he lost his focus and
the car hit a tree on an abandoned road. There was a breakdown and we
all suffered minor injuries but my friend who was driving suffered a
major knee injury. This incident taught me two major things. First,
you are not safe even if you drive responsibly because the other
person driving the car at the moment ( my friend in this case ) or
the other car in front can be careless to commit mistakes. Therefore,
one needs to be vigilant of not only oneself but the entire
surrounding. Second, technology has engulfed us so badly and hence we
need to use it properly to avoid its abuse and ensure our safety. Few
of the steps that I have taken personally, and that one can take is
to prohibit the cell-phone usage while driving, diligently follow all
the traffic rules, traffic lights and symbols .
