Deep Breath, Then Drive

Deep Breath, Then Drive

Sarah Schieffler

As a commuter in college, I have seen firsthand the negative effects of driving. I go to Loyola University New Orleans as a French Horn performance major. Since the music department is relatively small, I have to go to school at all hours of the day. Commuting is extremely scary driving from the calm West Bank to the crazy Greater New Orleans area.

In any city, there are driving trends because most people in the area have all learned from the same place. Driving to school every morning, pre COVID-19, I saw on average 3 accidents. On the days that I did not see any accidents, which was rare, I saw probably 10+ near accidents.

Driver Education is crucial in keeping the number of vehicular death or near deaths low. There are always going to be accidents because some things just cannot be prevented. The things that can be prevented, however, are so easy to prevent. It always baffles me when I see people driving so dangerously for no reason. Maybe those people are educated, maybe they’re not. I think one of the biggest things that could be taught in driving school is the importance of keeping a clear mind while driving. That could be just telling people ways to keep focused, but without tunnel vision, or just teaching them ways to not get mad and lash out.

Last semester, in the spring of my sophomore year, I was involved in an accident. It was not very serious but my car got really messed up and I missed a lot of class dealing with things related to the accident. I was driving to school for my class at 9:30 when a young woman ran a stop sign and hit me. To this day I am still very mad at the woman not because she hit me but because she had an infant in her backseat that could have been injured or even died from driving so recklessly.

When I was a junior in high school, my parents forced me to go to driving school. I hated the idea of driving because it was and still is so scary to me. Because of my fear, I try driving as safe as I possibly can. If there are times that I feel like I was not driving to standard, I get really upset and immediately try to drive better. I never want my actions to harm someone and especially not kill them so I try my hardest to drive to standard. It gets to the point where I get frustrated when I see people driving unsafe or not following the standard. I hope that more students learn how to drive safely and continually drive safely so we can see the annual fatality go steeply down.