Driving: A Big Responsibility

Alex Sandoval

November 29, 2020

Driving: A Big Responsibility

Driver education may be more important than some people realize when it comes between driving safe and responsibly on the road, to being scared and reckless. In Drivers Ed, teens are not only taught about the rules and laws they must obey to be a safe driver, they are walked through step by step on how to perform them while behind the wheel in real life scenarios. For example, “the three most common reasons for accidents to occur with younger drivers are not looking ahead and scanning for possible hazards, driving too fast for road conditions, and being distracted by either something outside or within the vehicle,” according to Teen Driver Statistics. Conclusively, without the proper Drivers Education instruction or hands on driving, teens are more susceptible to crashing, injuring, or even in worse cases killing other people on the road.

There are many steps that can be put in place in order to reduce the amount of deaths related to driving and a majority of them are very simple to follow. As stated above many vehicular deaths have to do with some type of distraction, leading to the loss of focus needed to successfully maintain complete control over said vehicle. A few key steps that have been proven to lower the risk of fatal crashes are, but not limited to, wearing a seatbelt at all times, not using a cellphone while operating a vehicle, limiting the consumption of food and beverages, and not exceeding the posted speed limit. These few are by far not the total list of steps that can and or need to be conducted in order to reduce the probability of deaths, but they are definitely at the top.

Personally, I have never been in a car accident with or without my friends and family, but have seen some very close calls regardless. Although it may seem like the drivers fault the majority of the time when a wreck occurs, sometimes it is good to take a step back and realize that everyone is human. When people are faced with life or death situations, they don’t necessarily have the time to react with a clear mind. In which case people must purely act off of their natural born survival instincts in order to give themselves the best possible outcome. When this kicks in, the mind loses all focus on the task at hand and does the only job it’s hardwired to do, and that is protect you. This is one of the leading causes to accidents throughout all ages because no matter how much experience one might have driving, there will always be independent variables that one is unaware of until it is unfortunately too late.

In order to become a better and safer driver one must first accept the great responsibility and privilege it is to be able to drive. Many people take that for granted, the idea of driving is often misunderstood, it is not a right that you are able to drive for if it were, everyone would have access to a car and gas would be free of charge. Although driving was one of the most influential and technologically significant things to ever be engineered in the history of mankind, it holds a certain degree of power that many people never truly understand how to handle. For one to truly become a better and safer driver, one must rid oneself of selfishness, like texting or talking on the phone, laziness, like not having both hands on the wheel or not looking up ahead for potential risks, and lastly limit or completely shut out each and every distraction.