
Name: Veda Wheeler
From: Morgantown, West Virginia
Votes: 0
Education Saves Lives
Education Saves Lives
The exhaustion finally settled behind my eyes as I lazily lifted myself off of the cold hallway floor. Looking down at my phone, I saw that I had been at speech practice for four straight hours. I set my phone down and, yawning, stretched my arms above my head in an attempt to wake some part of me up. It was time to go home. Digging around in my bag for something I could snack on while I tried to look for a ride back to my house, I heard my friend shout down the hallway.
“Hey Veda! Do you need a ride?”
Perfect timing. I had never driven with her before, but I still accepted, grateful to not have to sit on the cold, dirty floor any longer than I had to.
We walked down to her car together in the back parking lot, laughing to each other about how her car was one of the only ones left. As we were talking, she said something about being a terrible driver and hoping that I didn’t mind hitting a few potholes here and there. Of course I didn’t really care; I had been in the car with plenty of bad drivers before. It was what she followed that statement with that threw me off.
“Haha yeah… I don’t even have my permit yet, but my parents let me drive anyway.”
At that, I was thinking, “Woah okay hold up, what?” It made no sense to me how both she and her parents could be so calm about doing something not even a little bit legal. So that’s exactly what I asked her.
“How can you and your parents be okay with doing something so ridiculously illegal like that?”
She only looked at me and shrugged.
“I don’t know… It’s not like it matters. I’ll just learn everything when I have to actually take the test and then forget it all right after anyways.”
From the very start of learning how to drive, I was always faced with just how little those working to learn how to drive actually took seriously throughout the learning process. This issue of not really caring all that much about learning the rules of the road became even more prominent at the beginning of quarantine last year. This was due to the fact that my closest DMV didn’t even require teenagers to go take their drivers tests (not permit tests, the real deal) in person because of the covid policies put in place. To not take driving seriously is to risk your own life as well as the lives of those around you on the road; however, a lot of teenagers these days haven’t seemed to have fully grasped that terrifying truth just yet.
With that being said, in order to save lives and make driving something that gets you from point “a” to point “b” rather than a potential tragedy, it is incredibly important to teach those of age to drive extensive drivers’ education. The more rules that young drivers are taught, the more they will be aware to follow them. As a result, significantly less accidents will occur. Not to mention the rules of driving outside of knowing your basic road signs and intersection procedures such as the serious dangers of driving while intoxicated or how to handle road rage. Drivers’ education should cover a vast expanse of information because what these young drivers don’t know could actually hurt themselves and others.
However, teaching basic drivers’ education in schools should not be the only measure taken to ensure safety on the road. Those pushing for drivers’ safety should encourage parents of young drivers to start teaching their children about the dangers of the road and how to prevent them at a young age. Influential creators or brands should start considering speaking up about the importance of being a good driver and how not doing so could have terrible consequences as well. Younger people are more likely to listen to those they look up to, especially if said person/brand is popular and/or famous. Schools should have specific courses pertaining to driving under the influence that are required to be taken before graduating high school. It should be emphasized by those influential in these young drivers’ lives that it is extremely unsafe to text and drive or have any unnecessary distractions in your vehicle in the first place. I have lost far too many friends and loved-ones to driving-related accidents to see such a cycle continue.
One such person was my cousin. He was staying over at my grandma’s house along with my young 5-year-old self and my family to visit when he decided that he wanted to take a mid-day bike ride down the road near our house. He wore a helmet and had reflective stickers on his bike; everything should have been fine, he was taking all of the necessary precautions. The tragic reality is, however, even with all of this and the fact that he wasn’t even driving in the road, rather, the gravel beside it, he was still hit head-on by a driver who wasn’t paying attention. My family later found out that that driver was texting someone, eyes completely off of the road. Had this person simply waited until they got home to answer that message or pulled over to the side of the road, my uncle would not have been hit. He passed away a day later, just barely 24, his entire future ripped away from him due to the recklessness of another.
This is an event that has plagued my family for years and something that greatly influenced my beginning process of learning to drive. I have always been hyper-aware of the road while I drive, making sure to be as safe as possible so that no other family has to go through what mine had to. I make sure to have any distractions that I can control extremely limited, and I always make sure my friends do as well when I drive with them. I babysit a lot of kids very often, and I have been considering teaching them some watered-down road safety so that they’ll already have it in the back of their minds at a young age. I have also helped many of my friends study thoroughly for their drivers’ tests, and I would be more than happy to do so for more people in the future.
To conclude, drivers’ education and safety is incredibly important to me. Even the smallest bit of information given to a young driver can help save their lives as well as countless others. Too many reckless mistakes are being made nowadays, especially having to do with using phones while driving, seeing as though the importance of phones and social media in our everyday lives is a prominent issue. Even though it may seem like a daunting task to educate all of these teenagers before they even begin to learn to drive, it is something that will pay off greatly for the future generations to come.