Fix the Cause, Not the Outcome

Ana Cooper

Drivers ed Initiative Award Scholarship Essay

8/1/2020

Fix the Cause, Not the Outcome

Most parents who teach their teens how to drive are not necessarily bad drivers, but bad teachers. Most American teens learn how to drive from their parents. Most parents dread the thought of teaching their teen. Most teens detest the idea of learning their parents driving habits. More parents should try to drive how they want their teens to drive instead of excusing themselves and driving irresponsibly. Many teens are forbidden from answering their phone or listening to music while driving, but parents use their phones in front of their children because they call themselves “experienced drivers”. No matter how experience a driver is, there are habits like answering the phone that are irresponsible, distracting, and dangerous. If people, parents especially, wanted to reduce the amount of driving deaths, parents should be tested and trained to teach their children how to drive.

There are many brilliant and talented people in every field that are terrible teachers since they do not know how to teach. Each state should have a parent undergo a course and exam to be permitted to teach their teens how to drive. Stop signs require one to stop, not slow down. Yield means to be prepared to stop and yield to other traffic, not zip through. Yellow lights mean to slow down, not speed up. Lifting up a shoulder to hold one’s phone in place while changing lanes on a highway is dangerous. Looking down at a phone for navigation purposes is still dangerous because it makes the driver look down. The passenger should do that instead. Driving above the speed limit because no one is around is still dangerous. All the bad driving habits parents have are poor examples to the next generation of drivers. If teens see their parents drive like that, they will think it is okay too. There are a lot of course requirements for teen drivers already, but not for the parents of the driver.

If people want a decrease in the death of teen drivers, but more emphasis on the parents of the drivers. Provide and even require driving instructor courses for parents with any kind of driving record. This does not infringe the rights of the individual if the purpose of the law is for the common good. If there is an issue with the student, examine the teacher. The better parents drive and teach, the better habits teen drivers form, ending the cycle of teen driving fatalities.