Why Safe Driving is Important

Why Safe Driving is Important

You’re 16 years old and you’re taking your written permit test. You turn it in and they tell you that you’ve passed. You get in your car with your mom and drive off cautiously. Six months later, you go and take your drivers test. You get into the car with the adult that scores you and will tell you if you have passed. After driving the course, you come back to the point where you started, and they tell you that you’ve passed. Happiness fills you as you tell your mom you can drive on your own. The first few months of driving on your own you’re very cautious. You never take your hands off the wheel or your eyes off the road. As time passes, you get more comfortable and feel like you can multitask while driving. This is how it is for most teenagers, but it is not acceptable. We don’t think that looking at our phone for a second, or looking down to change the radio station will cause harm. That is where most people make the mistake of wrecking. Anything can happen in a couple of seconds. Driver education is very important and can reduce the number of deaths in car crashes. The average number of deaths in America caused by reckless driving is 34,000 a year. There is no excuse for why we should not be practicing safe driving to decrease this number. By informing people about the number of deaths or injuries caused by preventable wrecks, it will make them realize the importance of safe driving. Safe driving is a simple thing to do, yet some people make it so complicated. Some of the things you can do that would be considered safe driving would be: keeping your eyes on the road at all times, using your blinkers, staying off your phone, keeping your hands on the wheel, and other simple tasks like these. One of my close friends got into a wreck not too long ago. While she was driving, she was listening to music and wanted to change the song. She looked down at her phone for a few seconds and when she looked up, she was very close to colliding with another car. This caused her to swerve to keep from hitting the other car, but she ended up running off the road into a ditch. It did so much damage to her car, it was less expensive for them to buy her a new one, rather than fix hers. This wreck was one hundred percent preventable. It shows that even if you take your eyes off the road for one second, anything can happen. After her wreck, it made me an even more cautious driver. For me, I am good about staying focused on the road. As a teenager, I feel that if not only teens but adults knew the statistics and realized how easy it is to get into a preventable wreck, they would practice safe driving more.