Importance of Driver Education

Driver education is one of the most important matters in the US today, yet it is also one of the most ignored. Every day I notice people ignoring certain safety precautions and it bothers me so much. How can someone get in their vehicle and just ignore the safety of their passengers and the rest of the drivers on the road. Hundreds, maybe thousands of lives could be saved by simply turning on your blinker, stopping fully at a stop sign, paying attention to lanes, STAYING UNDER THE SPEED LIMIT, etc. Is it really more important to get to work on time than to keep the lives of those all around you safe? Imagine if it were you in the other drivers situation. Would you be able to watch your driving from a 3rd person view and still find it okay? Or would you realize that maybe you aren’t driving as safe as you could be? If you were to drive past the police unexpectedly, would you have to make a change to your driving before you got pulled over? These are questions I ask myself constantly as I’m driving down the road. Whether it’s simply in my neighborhood or in a parking lot, or on the highway or main roads, I’m doing what i can to stay safe, simply by following the rules of the road. Can you say the same?

This matter is such a big deal to me because of the death of my uncle, Eric. A little over a year ago, I had to watch one of the closest people in my life get buried without ever getting a chance to say goodbye. I think about Uncle Eric almost everyday, and can still see his face every time I get behind the wheel. At first I was mad. I was mad that someone would really get behind the wheel knowing that they weren’t sober enough to drive themselves, putting everyone around them in danger. I kept asking myself, how can you be so messed up behind the wheel that you drive in the whole opposite lane going a whole opposite direction. But then I told myself that things like this happen everyday, and we have to learn to move on. I still don’t think I will ever move on, but I know I can do my part to stop others from having to go through the same pain me and the rest of my family had to go through when we heard the news.

The first step was to hold myself responsible for MY OWN driving and to make sure that I never made the same mistake as the man that killed my uncle. Even though most of my classmates made a random driver’s hour log for their permit, I made sure to get the full 60 hours of practice in, plus more. I made sure that I was of full confidence before I even thought about going to test for my restricted license, which is what I have currently. I feel that most people these days rush into driving, and that’s why they will never drive with a full driver’s education. They’re so focused on being able to drive, that they don’t focus on the necessary precautions and regulations that every driver should know. There is a huge variety of online drivers courses that can maximize your knowledge of drivers safety before you ever get behind the wheel. And if the safety of others isn’t a big enough motivation, completing a course can lower one’s insurance as well. There are so many little steps like these that ANYONE can do, yet so little people actually do it.

This is why a change must be made. Kids need more inspiration to take the necessary precautions. As a teenager, I can admit that it’s easy to see yourself as invincible. Teens today don’t think enough about the future and what COULD happen, they only think about the present and what they desire the most. No, this is not okay, but at the same time it’s not going to change. So, maybe by adding more incentives like taking in person driver classes for credits at school, earning more for doing better on drivers test, and/or getting your insurance lowered for getting 0 answers wrong on the test to get your permit, we could motivate teens to really focus in on the specifics and little things that make a huge difference in the long run.