It Starts With You

It
Starts With You

As
you grow old there is one thing that even with a lot of experience a
person can still be injured or killed, and that’s driving. I am
currently 18 years old, but in the almost 4 years I have been
driving, I still sometimes worry about fatal mistakes I could make on
the road. Luckily, I had a very good driving instructor and she would
always stress the importance of safe driving, especially in teens.
Driving education is extremely important for every single teen to
take seriously, which many do not. There are many rules of the road
that are always changing depending on the state or nation, so the
instructors have to be very knowledgeable about the laws. In my
opinion a driving instructor is the most important kind of teacher,
they are teaching teens not just to drive, but how to drive safely.
Unfortunately, accidents happen, and the death toll from driving
related deaths is discouraging. However, there are many steps that we
all can take in order to change that, we can invest our time into
complex solutions or smaller faster solutions. For example, a complex
solution would be, we can engineer cars in a way that every car would
have a breathalyzer test before the engine would start, or we could
create a sensor that would have to have a cellphone placed on it in
order to start driving. There is something that everyone can do in
order to lower death tolls, we can teach teens from the start that
driving over the speed limit is breaking the law and is wrong, even
if no one is there to see it. We can change the way teens think about
driving, instead of the mindset of, “I need to get there as quick
as possible”, it can become, “I need to get there safely”. I am
a teen and I have seen first-hand that many teens don’t realize how
dangerous driving really is, they don’t realize that they are not
only responsible for their lives, but the lives of everyone in the
car too. Unfortunately, a kid in my high school was not so lucky when
it came to returning home safely. My junior year of high school
before first period there was an unsettling rumor going around saying
that a student, one who I had went to kindergarten with, had died in
a car accident last night. When 1^st period started that
rumor was confirmed by the school’s principle on the loudspeaker,
my heart sank. A nice kid that I have known all my life was gone
before he could even apply for college, I felt for his family and his
close friends. The school was in a grey middle that day, everyone was
almost silent in class, even the teachers would barely talk that day.
Later, we all found out that he had died of a car accident on the
highway. I still do not know exactly what happened, but I know he
somehow lost control of the car and crashed. There were no other
people with him that night, which was the one good thing about that
day. From then on, I was scared, but a good, controlled scared where
I wanted to be a safer driver so that nothing like that would happen
to me or to the people that I care about. I constantly stress to my
younger siblings to be cautious while driving and to think of the
people that would grieve if anything were to happen to them. I know
that teaching every new teen who first puts their hands on the wheel
to know that driving can be just as dangerous as it can be freeing.
We can make a change, but every one of every age must know that they
can make a positive impact by driving safer.