Driver’s License

The number of people who die in a car accident every year is extremely shocking. Worldwide, 1.35 million people lose their lives to car crashes every year. Now let me put into perspective just how many people that is. It’s the equivalent of around 24 dodger football stadiums full of 56,000 people dying. Every single year. These statistics are not even including the additional 20 to 50 million people that suffer from injuries that have been nonfatal. In comparison with Japan, Canada, and Australia the US has a 50 percent higher record of car crash related deaths.

A study released by the University of Nebraska of over 150,000 teen drivers found that those who did not complete a driver’s education course were faced with a significantly higher risk for receiving traffic tickets. Additionally these teens were also more likely to be involved in a fatal accident or have an accident with an injury. The state of Nebraska requires new drivers to either take a drivers education course, or have logged hours of driving with an adult who is supervising. This last part surprised me as I come from a state where I wasn’t aware we had a similar requirement. Some states such as Arkansas have no set requirement for the hours of supervised driving time. California has a requirement in place for 50 hours of supervised driving, with 10 hours being at night before being able to get your license.

A few necessary steps that can be taken to reduce the number of driving related deaths and violations would be to make a law mandatory in every state to take a drivers education course before being allowed to have a license. Additionally if we had a set amount of supervised driving time across all the states, I believe that would be very beneficial in teaching young drivers safer practices. Another step we can take is to make mandatory every 5 years recertification of these courses to ensure the information stays fresh longer. The current way we are required to only test once until age 65 is unsafe. In many professions recertification is required to keep the license, such as recertification for an EMT or a doctor. I believe it’s vital to require recertification or at least require education courses every 5 years.

I took my permit test 5 or 6 times due to the fact that I just didn’t read the book for the first couple times and my parents wanted me to get my license. After probably the 4th time my dad had me text him 5 to 10 things I had learned from the book every night for a week or 2. This included things such as what the speed limit was in a residential area, what to do when approaching a yellow light, and what the white lines mean on the road. I think it would be beneficial to the teen trying to get the license if a similar system were to be implemented. If a teen had to login to the dmv website everyday and complete 5 questions everyday for 2 weeks before they were permitted to take their driving test, I think we would have much safer drivers on the road.

I have had family members get in bad car accidents luckily they only had minor injuries. When I was about 14 my mom was on the way to come see me in the hospital. She had a rollover accident where she almost died. A semi veered into her lane while she was driving and she had to swerve to miss it and she hit the median and the car she was driving flipped 3 times. She had to wear a neck brace due to the accident. I am so thankful that this was as bad as the accident got and that she didn’t lose her life. I have also been in the car with people who have been driving irresponsibly and it has been uncomfortable being in the car. It has made me fear being in a car accident. I believe something we can do to cut back on accidents as well would be to use our phones not at all when driving. This would help distracted driving accidents go down tremendously.

Steps that I can take to become a better driver would be to not practice distracted driving habits. These would include habits such as messing with the radio or mirrors in my car. I can take care of these things before I start driving to ensure more safety as I drive. Steps I believe everyone should take would be to not engage in texting while driving as it is a big distraction and in the US it accounts for nearly 1 out of 4 driving related accidents.