Driver Education Initiative Award – Kacy Jeffries

Driver Education Initiative Award: In the Driver’s Seat – Kacy Jeffries

As someone who has been driving for four years now without an accident or a ticket (knock on wood), I realize the importance of being educated about driving. Drivers education courses are designed to create less accidents and to show young drivers the correct way to go about certain situations while driving. One of the main things that comes to mind is teaching kids that driving slower in bad weather conditions or at night is extremely important. A lot of deaths come from accidents in the winter time or during storms. These are especially dangerous times because not only is the visibility reduced, but the road conditions are terrible. Young drivers must understand that driving too quickly on a wet or slippery road can easily cause an accident. Sliding off the road or into another car can cause tremendous damage to not only the driver’s life, but also the other driver’s life as well.

To hopefully reduce the number of deaths related to driving, there are a few things that we can do to at least warn people about being crazy on the roads. As I said before, advising young drivers to be as safe as they can during dangerous weather conditions is a good start as to what we can do to help. Another thing that we can do to reduce the number of deaths is punish drunk drivers more for taking the lives of innocent people in car accidents. There should not only be jail time, but a number of fines that go along with it. When people drive intoxicated, their reaction time and critical thinking skills dramatically change. I believe that there should be more of a punishment for doing this because they’re not only putting their own lives in jeopardy, but everyone else around them too. The only real way to stop this from happening is to scare people out of doing it. They should think “oh shoot, I have to pay THAT much if I get caught? I shouldn’t risk it then.” The sad part is that I don’t think we’ll ever be able to stop people from driving drunk or driving too quickly for the weather conditions. There will always be those, as I’ll lightly put it, dumb people who “think they’re fine” or are “in a hurry” and don’t consider the consequences that could come from driving recklessly.

When I was in eighth grade, my mom was in a near-death car accident. It was in the winter time when my younger sister (who was in sixth grade at the time) and I were at basketball practice for our travel league. I’ll never forget my grandpa unexpectedly coming to pick us up and telling us what happened. She was coming to pick us up and she was driving on South Shore Drive in Whitehall, MI where we live. This particular road goes right by White Lake and there are a couple of sharp turns right next to the lake. If a driver is going too fast, it’s potentially pretty risky. My grandpa told us that her car slid on black ice and that she side swiped a tree, luckily on the passenger side, towards the lake. If the tree wasn’t there, she would’ve gone into the lake and probably died. I’ll never know if she was going too fast around that turn or if it was just a stroke of bad luck, but I will never forget the image of her in the hospital bed with gashes all over her and a neck brace that she’d wear for the next few months. It was a traumatic experience for not only my mom, but for my sister and I as well.

Knowing the dangerous and deadly things that can happen from driving, I always make sure to be as safe as I can on the road. As I mentioned before, I’ve never gotten pulled over, never gotten a ticket, and never been in an accident. To prevent injury to myself and others, I always go the speed limit, always take precautions during bad weather, never ever drive high or intoxicated (that part’s easy because I don’t do any of that stuff anyways), and always keep my phone off and the music at a lower level. Additionally I live in the country, so I’ve learned that it’s incredibly important to keep my eyes on the road no matter what. At any moment, a deer could jump out of the woods or a car could pull out of a hidden driveway. As someone who’s going into education, I want to be able to relay the importance of staying safe to the younger (and of course more reckless) generations. The only way to reduce the amount of accidents that come from reckless driving is to teach people respect. I believe that if we as educators of the youth can teach them to respect each other and cherish each other’s lives, they might rethink their bad decisions on the road.