Are we as drivers prepared enough for the road?

Have you ever said to yourself “I should’ve prepared more” after glancing upon a test and realizing you do not know what to do? This is what drivers often think to themselves when they are mere milliseconds away from crashing. Imagine glancing upon the window and seeing the silhouettes of the drivers and passengers of the cars that you are about to crash and knowing that their lives are going to end or change forever just because you forgot or ignored what you were taught during your driver education. Driver education is necessary to avoid accidents on the road and prevent deaths and injuries since it lets drivers know what to do and what not to do when driving or when a dangerous situation arises.

Drivers’ education is important not because it is needed to obtain a license, but due to the fact that it ultimately leads to safety and more importantly, to the prevention of deaths; it prepares drivers to drive safely and avoid accidents by explaining exactly what to do during dangerous situations and what might happen if the situation is not avoided, which often leads to tragedies; it is a window to the past in the form of a compilation of information and rules based on accidents that happened, and it helps drivers by providing them with a chance to avoid such accidents from happening ever again. It should not be considered only as a mere formality, but as something that needs to be remembered and taken into practice when driving to ensure safety. Now, knowing what to do and doing as taught are not the same; the reason being that people tend to not act exactly the way they would like to when a situation arises, especially if it is a stressful situation that requires split-second decisions, but actually knowing what should be done during a dangerous situation, like a close encounter with a car accident, greatly reduces the chance of making a mistake, even if a driver does not do exactly what they were planning to do, also reducing the likelihood of getting injured or injuring others in the process. Unfortunately, some drivers do not take drivers’ education as the serious matter it is and either forget or ignore what they were taught, increasing the likelihood of causing and accident and injuring themselves and others.

Many crashes end up in just material damage, but there are a considerable number of accidents resulting in injuries or even death. The National Safety Council stated in an article [1] that in 2019, 36,000 crashes resulted in 39,107 deaths, and 3,100,000 crashes resulted in 4,500,000 medically consulted injuries. In some of these cases it did not even matter how safely the victims were driving; they were injured or killed in a matter of seconds by car crashes that could have been prevented by the drivers that caused the accidents by using what they learned during their drivers’ education. As mentioned earlier, nearly all crashes are caused by distracted and or reckless drivers, and in most cases, these drivers do not cause an accident due to their lack of regards for others, but because they saw their driver education as a mere formality, causing them to not consider driving as something potentially dangerous and to not fully consider the disastrous consequences of a car accident. Regards with safety, what cannot be done when driving, and several dangerous situations and how to avoid them were topics taught during their education, but since it was only a formality to them, they just memorized them in order to pass the exams, and once they obtained their licenses, the majority of this information was forgotten or not usually taken into practice; to make matters worse, during the driving exam, only the driving under normal conditions is tested; dangerous situations such as understeering, oversteering, other reckless drivers, hydroplaning, brake failure, or even flat tires are only taught on paper and never tested in a real car; this is not a problem for drivers that took their education seriously since they learned what to do by heart, but this leaves drivers that considered their education as a formality completely defenseless when one of these situations presents on the road. The latter can be reflected on a research brief on car crashes in relation with age made by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety [2], which suggested that the car crash rate per 100 million miles of drivers of ages 16-17, who happened to just obtain their licenses, was nearly double of those from the 18-19 group and 4.5 times that of the drivers of ages 30-59. This can be explained by the fact that as drivers become older, they drive more, gaining experience along the way by seeing other accidents happen either first hand or through the media, or by experiencing one motivating them to prepare more to know what to do when a dangerous situation arises; this motivation causes them to engrave in their minds what they learned during their drivers’ education, causing them to become more capable of preventing damage to their car, or more importantly, to themselves and others. Fortunately, a car crash does not need to happen so that modern drivers become capable of avoiding them; they can review or even learn more about what to do during these dangerous situations to avoid these tragedies.

Accidents can happen at any time to anyone, but they can be avoided altogether or at least their severity can be greatly decreased by knowing what to do, and because of this, driver’s education is indispensable to drivers since it is a tool that provides them with the information required to do this and prevent injuries and deaths. Instead of saying “I should’ve prepared more” just before crashing, it can cause drivers to say “that was a close call” after preventing an accident. More informed drivers can lead to lower deadly accidents, and it is never late be prepared and know what to do in order save lives and stay safe on the road.

References

1. “Overview. “NSC Injury Facts.https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/motor-vehicle/overview/introduction/(Accessed Nov-25-2021)

2. “Rates of Motor Vehicle Crashes, Injuries and Deaths in Relation to Driver Age, United States, 2014-2015.” AAA Foundation For Traffic Safety.https://aaafoundation.org/rates-motor-vehicle-crashes-injuries-deaths-relation-driver-age-united-states-2014-2015/(Accessed Nov-22-2021)