Considering Others and Yourself

Many people who encourage safe driving habits always say something along the lines of “drive safe, not only for yourself but for other people as well” or “it could be you, or that person could be someone’s family”. Although these statements are very valid and true, they don’t have to be the only reason that someone wants to drive safely. You could be the most selfish person on planet Earth, not care about others and still want to drive safely because you don’t want to potentially get into an accident. Not saying that thinking selfishly is right at all because we should take other people’s lives and safety into consideration but in reality, not everyone cares about other people. That shows when people drive drunk, or when they speed, or when a person gets road rage or just doesn’t pay attention to the road. Accidents caused by distracted driving can and always do end up not going as people might have hoped. You always think it won’t happen to you, or that you know what you’re doing, but accidents happen and they don’t pick and choose who they happen to. Accidents happen when you initiate a process that has even the slightest possibility of mistake. Now again, realistically no one is ever going to be a perfect driver and we will make mistakes sometimes, but when you make the conscious choice to be on your phone while driving, or even eat while driving when you know that it has the potential to end in an accident, you are putting yourself in a position to initiate that potential, even if it is small. We as a general people need to get into the habit of ruling out distractions, putting our phones away when behind the wheel and planting our focus on the task that is essentially at hand. You may think that practicing safe driving is annoying and tedious, but think about it like this: if you’re focused on the road and paying attention and someone else on the road makes a mistake or potentially does something that could cause an accident, you would be prepared even if they would not be. Now, think about it like this, if you and everyone else on the road were practicing safe driving at the time that one driver makes a mistake, everyone is prepared and it leads to less damage and commotion on the road. Now think about if everyone in the scenario were practicing safe driving, there would be the smallest potential of a possible accident and everyone gets to where they need to be in a safe, calm and organized manner.