Importance of drivers’ education in saving lives

Drivers’ education has changed greatly over the years. When I was in drivers’ education, at the age of 15, I sat down with my grandfather and explained the current requirements needed to get an instructor’s permit and driver’s license. He was surprised to learn the extent and workload of the drivers’ education program, saying that “back in his day” there was minimal education or practice driving required. This has clearly changed and is not the case today.

Nowadays, drivers’ education is a more rigorous learning program with extensive driving practice enforced. As a result, the amount of motor vehicle crashes and deaths have decreased in the past 45 years by approximately 14-17% respectively. For this reason, I consider that successful completion of drivers’ education is extremely important for every new driver before hitting the road on their own. Especially since teenagers are typically addicted to their phones and have a sense of invincibility, drivers’ education is critical to saving lives because it teaches them the extreme risks of being distracted while driving. The greatest distraction being their phones. This leads into what I believe can be improved in drivers’ education.

In my opinion, the most impactful change that can be made to drivers’ education would be to increase emphasis by local authorities on how distractions from a cell phone cause thousands of deaths each year and as such, personalize the messaging to young drivers. In drivers’ education I was told that texting and driving, or being on your phone in any way, was dangerous. Yet I still see a lot of my friends and classmates constantly on their phones while driving. I believe that in drivers’ education the dangers of texting and driving should be stressed more heavily especially by local authorities such as city police and medical staff in local clinics or hospitals. Personalizing the message by localizing it with familiar authorities, increasing the frequency of the messaging and intensifying the content should help pound the thought into every teenager’s head that texting and driving can lead to death.

I personally have never been in a car accident but a few of my close friends have been. One of my closest, longtime friends was late to school in the middle of the winter and he decided to partially scrape his front windshield. That said, my friend is intelligent and uses common sense most of the time, but he still decided to make a poor, short sighted decision. As he left his neighborhood streets, he could not fully see out of the right side of his windshield and admittedly checked his phone as a new message buzzed in. A few seconds later he ran into a fire hydrant and totaled his car. It ended up costing him thousands of dollars but could have cost him so much more; injury or death to himself or someone else. All of which could have been avoided if he would have taken the lessons learned in drivers’ education more seriously and stopped to think of the risks of driving without a full field of vision and letting yourself get distracted by your phone, no matter how late you show up to where you’re headed or how important that text message is.

The truth is, I have not necessarily followed everything I learned in driver’s education and I have experienced moments of being an irresponsible driver. Everyone has something they can improve on and the more experience gained from practice driving and education, the greater chance you have of contributing to safe roads and less injuries and deaths.  Personally, I know I can work on being less lazy when it comes to driving. There are moments where I do not fully stop at a stop sign, where I check my phone at a stop light, or I do not fully clean off all the windows in my car before I leave on a very cold winter day in Minnesota. All these things are easily preventable and as more distractions arise, drivers’ education can continue to adapt their tactics and young drivers can be held more accountable for their choices.  If I consistently stop and think each time I get into a car about what I’ve learned in drivers’ education and the potential serious consequences of my actions, I will be a better and safer driver.