Insights from a teenage driver

“31% of fatal teen car accidents are caused by speeding” says Tony Arevelo on carsurance. In drivers ed in Utah, the class is split into two different sections; you have the in class learning about the rules of the road and then you have the road part of the class where you are actually driving the car practicing. The reasoning behind this is so that you are able to learn the rules of the road and become a safe driver. Without the class, you are most likely not going to know that specific types of roads have certain speed limits. On a residential road the speed limit is 25mph, and on a school road during school hours the speed limit is 20mph. You not only learn the speed limits of roads but also how to act when you pull up to a four way stop; you even learn what the different types of lines on the road mean. If you don’t take a class before you start driving, you are going to make mistakes and someone is bound to get hurt.

As said before, most fatal teen car accidents are caused by speeding. If we are able to control the roads and the speed limits, that number would significantly drop. In Utah, if you are on any type of highway/freeway the speed limit that everyone is going is at least 5mph over the recommended speed limit. In my drivers ed class, my instructor told me “you’re safe to go at least 5mph over the speed limit and you won’t get pulled over”. What kind of teacher is going to recommend that you speed? That is not okay, we need to change the things that we are telling the youth. I have also been told on countless occasions that as long as I’m going slower than the fastest car on the road, I’m safe. But that’s not necessarily true is it? Speeding isn’t safe and anyone that is telling you otherwise is wrong.

One of the other problems with drivers nowadays is that they are always driving distracted. The closest that I have come to being in a car accident is when one of my friends was driving and she was not only listening to the music so loud you couldn’t hear anything else, but she picked up her phone and was recording herself telling someone a story. At the time I didn’t think anything of it but when she almost rear-ended another car because she wasn’t paying attention to what was happening on the road, I realized that distracted driving is not okay. Since then I have been trying to be more conscientious in the way that I am driving. Some examples of this are: not speeding, not blasting the music, keeping my phone away from me, and giving all of my focus to the road and the drivers around me.