Why Is Drivers ed Important?

The reason why drivers ed is so important is because teens taking drivers ed are less likely to be involved in crashes or to receive a traffic violation during their first couple years of driving. In a study that followed more than 150,000 teen drivers over eight years, it was discovered that young drivers who do not complete drivers ed are 75 percent more likely to get a traffic ticket, 24 percent more likely to be involved in a fatal or injury accident, and 16 percent more likely to have an accident. Drivers ed can help keep everyone safe and help decrease the number of deaths related to driving. There are numerous steps that can be taken to help reduce your own personal risks and help reduce the number of deaths for others. One step is to make sure you’re always driving within the speed limit. We have speed limits for a reason; however, many people still like to ignore them. When you decided to drive faster than what is intended for that road, your putting others at risk and giving yourself less reaction time to avoid an accident. If you follow the speed limit, however, you won’t have to worry about that happening as much. Every day when you’re driving, you will constantly see people not paying attention to the change of color on traffic lights, not stopping at stop signs, driving way over or under the speed limit, and even weaving in and out of lanes. These things constantly happen due to drivers being distracted by their phones. Texting while driving not only puts the person who is texting in danger, but everyone around them is also at risk. Many states are taking steps by making it illegal to use a hand held device while driving. However, a personal step we should all take is to turn our phones all the way off or put it on “Do Not Disturb” and wait to check our phones when we stop. Doing this can help us not feel an urge to check our phones and keep everyone safe. I’ve personally seen one of my friends driving irresponsibly. My friends and I were driving to our school’s basketball game and my friend who was driving decided to pull out his phone and start texting. We immediately asked him to put his phone down as we wanted to make sure we stayed safe. Steps that I can take to be a better and safer driver is to not only look out for the safety of my vehicle, but also looking out for the safety of other vehicles on the road. For example, I make sure I never drive to close behind another car because if there is an immediate stop, I may not react fast enough and hit the car in front of me. If that happened, not only would I be putting my life in danger, but I would also be putting the person in the other car life at risk.