Reducing Dangerous Driving Habits

To reduce dangerous driving habits among teens they need to be given more incentive to drive safer. They need to be made aware of the real life changing consequences of things such as texting and driving or checking social media while driving, and they need to be show how much safer it is to have your full attention put into paying attention to the road. To teach the teenagers this information they should have it integrated more into schools’ drivers Ed programs and other teaching programs for driving. They should have people who were practicing dangerous driving habits come and speak explaining that it is not worth picking up and looking at your phone for. If this does not curve the use of phones or other distracting stimuli, then harsher punishments for those that are in accidents that involved an electronic should be taken into consideration. If the punish is severe enough teens will have less of a reason to pick up their phones, making them think twice before they reach for their phone.

Another possibility to keep people off of their phones while driving is to teach them what to do if they are faced with a situation where they believe they need to answer their phones. They can be told that instead of immediately reaching for their phone they can pull over and check their phone if they believe that it is urgent enough. They can on top of that be instructed to either turn their phones off or have the phone set to vibrate or to have the do not disturb setting on their phone. These options will completely remove the distraction from the driver and allow them to drive without worrying about when their phone goes off. This will make their drives safer and more enjoyable because they will not feel obligated to check their phone and they will not have anything distracting or startling them.

In conclusion there are a total of 3 things that can be done to potentially reduce the nuber of accidents related to dangerous driving habits. In the drivers ed classes students can be taught of the real world, life altering consequences of driving while distracted. They can have victims and perpetrators of driving distracted as guest speakers so they can make more of a connection between the action and the real-world consequences. Another possibility is having harsher punishments for those who have caused a car accident because of driving distracted. Having the punishment be severe this will provide more incentive for them not to speed because they will know that the consequences for driving while distracted do not out way what they get out of answering their phone. This will also help them realize that it is not worth it to answer their phone either. The last thing that can be done to hopefully curve distracted driving will be to inform people how to keep themselves from being distracted by their phone. If their problem is that they get distracted by the sounds that their phone makes they can be told different things that they can do to fix that problem. This can be from turning off their phone completely or just putting their phone on vibrate. This will let them know that they are in control of what distracts them and they can take charge of their safety while they are on the road.