Driver Education

Driver Education

In May of 2020, it was around 9:30 pm, I was driving home from work and it was dark out. I live in a rural area and I was going through a route that I knew very well but it had a forest surrounding the road. I had gotten my first car three months earlier so I was still fairly new at driving. All of a sudden a deer ran out in front of my car. I had almost no time to react, the only thing I could do was slam on the brakes but even that did not take off how loud the impact was when the deer hit my car. When the deer smacked my hood it sounded as if a huge meteorite had fallen on the front of my car. The deer almost totaled the car and it cost $6,000 to repair. Luckily I wasn’t injured and I had insurance so I only paid $500. To be safer drivers, teens need a better understanding of what to do in a situation with only a few seconds to react because one wrong move could mean the difference between life and death. According to the Center for Disease Control, about 3 million people in the United States alone are injured from motor accidents and car crashes remain the leading cause of death for teens in America. There are many risk factors when a teen gets behind the wheel. To me, the most harmful ones are inexperience, and not wearing a seatbelt. Something that driver education needs to do to decrease the deaths as a result of driving would be to educate students on what to do if a large animal runs out in front of you. When I took driver’s ed my sophomore year I felt that we didn’t spend enough time on those types of situations. Luckily for me, I didn’t have much reaction time because if I did then I probably would have tried to swerve away. However, I most likely would have gone off the road and the accident could have been way worse. While deer and other animals are an often occurrence in rural America, there’s another very deadly thing… not wearing a seatbelt. According to The CDC, motor vehicle deaths are 3 to 10 times higher in rural America. 61% of people who died in those crashes were not wearing their seatbelt. Steps that I take to secure the safety of me and other drivers is to always wear my seatbelt and to make sure all of my passengers are. My car has a feature that mutes the radio until all passengers are buckled. Steps that can be taken to decrease the deaths would be installing the feature that I have in my car for every single car. Teenagers (like me) love to drive and listen to music and for it to be muted until the seat belt is fastened is a great way to ensure safety. Teenagers should not have fear instilled about driving, instead, they need to be educated better about following the laws and what to do in split second situations.