Safety First: Driving in America

Everyone remembers their first car. Everyone remembers their first time cruising down the highway, windows down and the radio cranked, all alone with no pesky complaints from a mother who thinks ten below is much too fast. Personally, these memories are among my favorites. The sweet taste of freedom is like a drug to any sixteen year old and I gobbled it up, driving any and everywhere. Inevitably, reality came crashing into my teenage dream when I got into my first car accident a mere month from my 16th birthday. The slick, morning roads caused me to hydroplane–a term I didn’t even know at the time–straight into the back of an SUV, effectively totaling my car and significantly damaging theirs. Sitting there, mouth open, I didn’t know what to do. I had been taught to find the slope of a line and the difference between a complex and compound sentence, yet no one had prepared me for the event that happens to roughly six million Americans per year: a car crash. There were no driver-education classes offered at my school, there was no one to warn me that the freedom of a car also meant the responsibility of every life that sat in my passenger seat.

Today, teenagers are sent into the roads with no real idea of the dangers they hold. The warnings administered by parents hold no real weight in our heads simply because they come from the people whose job it is to worry about us. I believe that if drivers-education was a required course in all public high schools across the nation, the amount of car accidents and fatalities would decrease dramatically. It would ensure that almost every single teenager in America was being taught that their actions on the road have consequences. I was lucky in the sense that my crash only resulted in the death of a hand-me-down 2015 chevy, but that’s oftentimes not the case. Additionally, drivers education would not only emphasize the dangers of driving, it would also teach proper driving etiquette. Road rage is a common cause of car accidents, a problem that could be solved if everyone on the road followed the same driving protocol. Oftentimes, teenagers are taught to drive by their parents, meaning they adopt their personal style and mode of driving. The setting a person learns to drive in also has to be taken into account. A teenager who grew up in a rural community–driving down primarily empty backroads–will differ greatly from someone who grew up driving the crowded streets of a city. Throwing this conglomeration of backgrounds onto the same roads is a significant factor in the commonality of accidents. Drivers ed would help ensure that all students are observant and taking into account their present setting and situation while driving.

However, while drivers education is an excellent tool–one that I feel needs to be implemented and required–it mainly targets those who do not yet have actual driving experience. It does not take into account the millions of drivers who remain relatively ignorant to the amount of power they wield by simply driving to work every morning. I think a major step to avoiding current car accidents and their subsequent fatalities would be to require those with their licenses to take an intensified version of the drivers test every few years. As drivers get older and the novelty of driving wears off–an event that happens almost instantaneously–they become increasingly careless behind the wheel. Rather than remaining alert and aware of their surroundings, they rely on muscle memory to get them from place to place, going into autopilot while navigating through busy roads. This is something I think we are all guilty of and I strongly believe that having subsequent tests after our initial drivers test will help keep the roads safer, as well as keep our driving skills up to par. Those who fail to pass the test after an allotted amount of attempts would be required to attend a brief seminar and/or training to ensure they are not a threat to themselves or anyone else while driving. While some might consider this a tedious and even extreme measure, I think those who have lost a loved one in an avoidable car accident would disagree. However, even without state-ordered tests there are still steps that can be taken to combat driving accidents. By simply tossing our phones in the backseat we eliminate a huge–possibly the largest–distraction that could prevent us from paying our full attention to the road. In addition, having a system of accountability with a friend or loved one would not only be beneficial to our own safety, but would help to spread awareness of the issue.

In essence, the issue of safe driving affects us all, especially in a country where driving is the primary mode of transportation. It is not something that should be taken lightly, as one mistake could cost one person their life and the other their sanity.