I took Two Pages to Communicate “Get Gud” at Driving

Car crashes, as well as the death they cause, occur for 3 reasons: Mechanical Failure, Poor Reaction time, and Poor Judgement. In order to reduce the number of crashes and deaths that occur, reducing these causes will help substantially. As it happens, driver education can do several major things to assist in reducing them.

Mechanical Failures often occur due to negligence of warnings, and improper care of the vehicle. Educating drivers on the importance of doing proper maintenance on their vehicles will help to ensure that the vehicle is responsive in an emergency situation. In addition to maintenance, it is also important to know what the warning icons the car will communicate when its systems are about to fail, allowing the driver to take action before their systems fail for real. There is also something to say about educating drivers in cold areas about the importance of winterizing their tires/fuel/oil, and making sure their engine doesn’t freeze. If you want to personally reduce your likelihood of mechanical failure, try having your vehicle inspected, and if your State does not require safety inspections, advocating for them to be is a great way to reduce death.

Poor Reaction time is something that can improve, not just with experience, but through proper training and simulations. Having drivers understand when a situation is serious can help them be more aware and react faster. Having reaction time tests as a fun activity or developing them as a serious habit during driver education can also build the correct neural pathways to react quickly and correctly in an emergency situation. Substance abuse also negatively affects this cognitive function, so discouraging it before and while driving can save lives by preventing unmitigated disasters. Improving your own reaction time can be as simple as playing a few action oriented video games, and using online resources to learn about situations where increased care needs to be taken to remain safe.

Poor Judgement, similarly enough, is one of the most important things to correct if the roads are to be safe in the future. Poor Judgement can be affected by substances such as alcohol, so educating drivers on the importance of remaining sober in the hours before they need to drive, or instructing them on how to make sure they don’t ever drive when they aren’t can significantly reduce the number of crashes, and be extension, the number of deaths. Poor judgement can also be the fault of nervousness and inexperience, which education can significantly assist in. Teaching students to be calm while going at speeds over 60 miles per hour, to always be paying attention, and teaching them the actions they should take in extreme weather conditions, when around intoxicated drivers, and when making maneuvers with high probabilities of crashing (i.e. left hand turns) can assist in mitigating both the deadliest and most minute of car crashes.

I’ve been in car accidents before, though I was never driving at the time, and I’ve been in situations where drivers engaged in practices that were unsafe. None of them were particularly life threatening thankfully, but I was certainly worried whenever it happened. It’s also the case that none were under the influence of mind altering substances. Furthermore, I was with drivers with good reaction time, safe cars, and knew how to act in an emergency.