Driving Safely and Thinking of Others

Ellie Homan

Driving Safely and Thinking of Others

I remember turning 16 and being more than excited to get my driver’s license. I dreamed of the open roads, loud music, and the right of passage of every Texan teen that is a late-night Whataburger run. I took the written and driving test, passed with flying colors, and after a year of small-town driving, I thought I could conquer the world. My friend and I decided we were going to drive through and around Dallas over spring break. We weren’t prepared for the challenges that come with driving in a metroplex and weren’t paying the best of attention. My friend who was driving got distracted and we ended up rear-ending the car in front of us, totaling our car. The other person’s car was totally fine, but they were so angry at us that the police had to be called. We could have ended up being a statistic of road rage.

I remember my driver’s education consisting of an app, my grandma teaching me stick in her pickup, and the one day at school they had people take a vow of silence against drunk driving. That’s it. There was no depth to any of it. I never felt the current curriculum taught me much about just how dangerous driving can be. We don’t realize how important driver safety is until it’s us or someone we love in the front seat. While I do think we could educate young and old drivers alike, there’s only so much you can learn in a classroom about the real-life effects of road safety and situations you wouldn’t expect. I know nowhere in my course was I taught about driving in different areas. There wasn’t a chapter of traffic, or what to do when someone cuts you off. I think there’s a lot more diversifying to be done to the curriculum. 66% of traffic fatalities are caused by aggressive drivers. So many accidents could be avoided by teaching how to avoid aggression and what to do if a situation like that does arise. There have been more times that I or friends have been honked at, flipped off, and yelled at on the roads simply because we wouldn’t go twenty over than I can count on one hand. Road rage leads to over 30 murders per year . You would never expect someone cutting you off to go that far, but it does every year. There are many improvements that can be made to the current drivers ed, but there are also many ways teens like me can work harder on being safer and reduce the number of deaths while driving.

I can recall many times personally when I have either been in the driver’s or passenger seat of a car with my friends, blaring music, and singing at the top of my lungs. There’s been times where we’ve crammed more people in the back than there were seats. Fun times like these are so incredibly unsafe and we don’t even realize. Teens in movies do this, so why can’t we? What we see as “good memories” with our friends can result in traumatic events that last a lifetime. I know I can work on staying not distracted. I can start queuing up my songs before I take the car out of park, find ways to split groups up in more than one car, and many other ways. It can be so easy to get distracted nowadays. Another way we can be safer is limiting car décor. It has become very trendy to have super cute, mega decorated cars. I personally have fake grass in my floorboards instead of mats because I like the way it looks. But people are taking it as far as disco balls hanging from there rearview mirrors and dinosaurs taped to their dashboard. When you get into an accident, anything not secured to your car can become a projectile. Even simple things like bedazzled logos on steering wheels and steering wheel covers can be dangerous. In the event of an accident when your airbag goes off, the diamonds can seriously damage your face and skull, and not all steering wheel covers are made to quality where they grip super well. Having a cute car is not worth amplifying the effects of a car accident by any means.

There is still a lot of work and education to be had to our current and future drivers. If we want to make the future a better and safer place to drive, we can start now.