Drivers ed essay

Drivers ed helps students learn the rules of the road before they ever go behind the wheel. The more people who are educated about the rules of the road, the less likely accidents, and therefore driving deaths, become. Therefore, drivers ed needs to be available in every public school as part of the curriculum. Even students who never intend to drive in their life should still learn the rules of the road so they can report drivers who they see clearly breaking it.

Drivers ed can do a lot more than just prevent accidents. They also teach you the proper steps in emergency situations. Whether it be your battery dying, losing control of your vehicle, or seeing a tornado while driving, drivers ed has you covered. In elementary school, we learn basic safety tips, like what to do in a fire, what to do if you smell gas and what to do if a stranger asks for personal information. Drivers ed is the adult version of that, and the emergency lessons of drivers ed are just as, if not more important to survival in the adult world.

Beyond drivers ed, I also believe that speed limits need to be more strictly enforced. There are so many roads where speeding is so common that it would be a speeding ticket goldmine. If we consistently give out speeding tickets, people will think twice before going too far above the limit. However, I do understand that sometimes your speed is out of control. For example, if you were going the speed limit, but then went downhill, it would look like you were speeding, but you were going against forces that were out of you control. I believe going a few miles above the limit, although not “safe” it isn’t a big enough threat to warrant being pulled over.

I believe that the main place that speeding tickets should be handed out more often is school grounds and residential areas. These places purposely have low speed limits. This is because children could come running out at any time, meaning you must be going slow enough to stop quickly. However, people will still speed through these areas regardless of these facts. If we start handing out tickets in these areas, we can make communities and the roads as a whole safer.

Sometimes I’ll go to Instagram or snapchat and see a story of one of my friends posting a picture of video of them that was clearly made while they were operating a vehicle. There are few things that anger me as much as seeing this. This is a clear example of unresponsible driving. Even if you hands are on the wheel while you’re posting the picture or video, you’re still distracted because your focus, even if they won’t admit it, is on the photo or video being taken, not the road.

I believe the most important step of becoming a safe driver is to be patient. Far too often I see people honk there horns right after a light change, without regard to the reason why the car in front of them hasn’t moved. Whether it be because there are cars still going or because there are pedestrians crossing the street, people need to be patient. By pressuring cars to go, it can lead to accidents.

Another example of lack of patience is when cars feel the need to speed pasts lights when they’re yellow because they don’t feel like waiting for the next light. The point of a yellow light, despite popular belief, is to slow down if you can safely do so. People who speed past these lights increase the likelihood of accidents greatly. Although green does mean go, it is a good safety habit to wait a second before you go. This is to make sure that no cars will come speeding by last second. Cars who speed by as soon as the light turns green, along with people who speed through yellow lights, cause a good amount of accidents.

On top of that tailgating is also a product of poor patience. When you tailgate a car, you heavily increase your likelihood of an accident. There are two very common accidents that happen because of tailgating. The first is when the car being tailgated must stop quickly, leading to the tailgater rear-ending the front car. The second is if the lead car feels pressured into speeding up, leading to them getting into an accident that would’ve been avoided if they were going the speed limit.