Speak up; educate the people

Days before lockdown in England started, this seamless Wednesday afternoon has gathered significance to me. We had a half day at school, so we decided to go for a drive up to the country. I was in the passenger’s seat. It was our first time in a car together but I trusted him completely. The importance of that trust is always trivialised, you aren’t just trusting the driver to take you somewhere, you’re trusting the driver with your life and I didn’t know that.

It wasn’t as if I was unaware of the dangers of reckless driving; I’ve felt the pain of losing someone before their time because of a bad driver. But part of me, the naive, infantile part, thought, “it’s someone else, that won’t happen to me” but it’s always someone else until it isn’t. I never saw the appeal of drag racing and speeding. Is it the adrenaline rush you get when you do something you know you shouldn’t? The thrill? Is it just something to brag about? Hurtling down a deserted side road, I began to tense up, fear coursing through my body, whereas he seemed to relax. Watching the speedometer intensely; I noticed he had this uncontainable excitement as we neared 100 MPH. I was silent. I stayed silent. Did I enable his reckless behaviour?

Everything seemed to slow when we hit the deer. I distinctly remember feeling its weight shifting the car. My thoughts moved at a glacial pace; I couldn’t speak. Begrudgingly he stopped the car and got out, only to check if his car was dented. Something my mum always said came to mind, “you don’t drive for yourself, you drive for other people” I had always taken it literally. I never understood it until that moment. Driving is meant to be completely selfless and considerate of others.

Driving isn’t just going from A to B, safety needs to be taken into account. Not just the safety of the driver but the passenger, pedestrians, other drivers and animals. How many deer and people have been hit and injured or killed at the hands of a reckless and irresponsible driver? How many deer and people have been left injured on the roadside because of a driver that just didn’t care? However, part of me believes I deserve some of the blame; I should have said something. Silence is deafening. Silence is an enabler. If you witness an irresponsible driver, don’t sit back. People are more likely to listen when someone they know reprimands them. Speak up.

There is an epidemic of driving related fatalities. A promise that you won’t drive recklessly is not enough. This is a problem that is deeply embedded in society; part of the solution lies in educating drivers as early as possible. Educating people is of the utmost importance as we must implant the idea that reckless driving should be left in video games. This education could be something as little as a lecture on driving safety for prospective drivers. This could include driving related facts and figures from the previous year for example, in the UK in 2019 there were 157,630 road casualties and 27,820 people were killed or seriously injured. But also, the idea that the driving rules and regulations must be upheld should be greatly accentuated. This isn’t a problem that can be solved by just one person, as a collective we must remember to speak up against recklessness because “you do not drive for yourself, you drive for other people”.

Source:https://www.racfoundation.org/motoring-faqs/safety#:~:text=Latest%20figures%20show%20that%20in,the%20year%20ending%20June%202018.