Safety and Education

A keyway we could improve safety on the roads is by improving the education system we use for new drivers. We should start driver’s education in elementary school and continue through middle school. It is a failure of the system that students learn about driving and safety just before they learn how to drive. Data shows repeated exposures to similar information increases retention about driving safety (NHTSA). In English students could write essays about driver safety and distracted driving. In math teachers could keep students aware of how many car accidents occur each year and how many are related to distracted driving. This data could also be used in statistics problems. In science students could learn about basic mechanics that help them be safer drivers, and they could also learn about why distracted driving or intoxicated driving is so dangerous. In history students could study the history of cars and car accidents. Moving on to improvements to the driver’s education itself, programs should include more worked through examples/real world application and try getting away from multiple choice questions. This way of learning sticks better with kids and has a greater impact. We should switch to a standardized federal system for driver’s education. We should also avoid what has not worked in some states use what has worked in the best performing states. For example, driver’s education is only required in about half of the fifty states. Some other programs that have worked well in other states are behind the wheel programs with a licensed instructor, and alcohol and drug education being included in driver’s education programs. Parents are a key part of the driver’s education process. Most of the driving student driver’s do is under their parent’s supervision. For this reason, parents should be offered a car insurance incentive to take refresher driving courses. This will make them better drivers and will help them educate their children to be better drivers. There are also some steps I think should be added to the post education system for driver certification. For the first year of driving the number of passengers outside of the person’s immediate family should be limited. This is because distracted driving is a major problem especially for younger people, and young passengers can often be especially distracting. There should also be a license review system where things like traffic violations, alcohol charges, or texting while driving could result in a suspension of the person’s license for a period of four years after they first obtain their driver’s license. All these changes to driver’s education should make people safer drivers and can be used as great opportunities to underscore the importance of paying full attention to the road. Texting and driving is a difficult problem to solve. Most of the time the person doing it goes unnoticed by police and the person who sent the text sees that nothing bad happened when they texted while driving. This is a very simplistic way of thinking however it is unfortunately how most people assess risk. If a person does something and nothing bad happens to them after doing it, they subconsciously conclude that there must be no issue with doing what they did. The same problem happens with cigarettes or drugs. People do something that they hear is risky but because they do not encounter the risk themselves personally, they do not think they are endangering themselves or more accurately, they do not feel like they are. There has been much spending on advertisements and public service announcements which discourage people from texting while driving. However, similarly to smoking, or drunk driving the change does not happen quickly. People will learn to stop texting and driving eventually. In the same way that smoking and drunk driving have gone down over time, but it has taken decades for these issues to see great improvements. This is because the real change has to happen in the form of a cultural shift where texting and driving becomes seen as more and more unacceptable. Or like with cigarettes we have to wait for more people to know someone or be someone who caused an accident because of texting while driving. This is the hard way to learn the lesson, and public awareness certainly speeds along the process of changing the culture. However, we ultimately must realize the slowly changing nature of these types of issues. Activism is important all the more so, without cultural advocates for change things would stay the same forever.

https://www.nhtsa.gov/people/injury/research/pub/drive-ed.pdf