The importance of Driver’s Ed

The importance of driver education as a whole is to be more informed about controlling a machine that has the ability to take you places but also to do it in a safe manner. Cars have been an important thing in people’s lives since their creation. It is a part of growing up with it being shown in society and in the media, especially in teen shows and in movies from as far as the 1980s, I believe, you are expected to start driving and own a car by the age of 16 in most cases. So with this being so prevalent in the media and in our day-to-day lives, it is only right that people gain the proper knowledge to operate a car. There have been so many cases I know where people don’t have licenses or haven’t taken a drivers ed class at all and they’re sitting behind the wheel. there have been some people that I know in that situation and have the unfortunate experience of being in an accident. I think about the current city that I live in Which is Brockton, Massachusetts, where RMV employees were fired for faking over 2,000 road tests over the course of 2020 and after. This means now that over 2,000 drivers in the state of Massachusetts are behind the wheel currently and have never had the proper experience or critique and may not even be fully qualified to be operating a vehicle. I know that my own mother is terrified to drive on the highway due to the high speeds and how reckless people tend to be on the road, I still know reckless drivers and I have been in cars multiple times where I had to brace for impact while the driver was breaking or have multiple people in the car yell “ SLOW DOWN PLEASE”. It is sad to say but my family is no stranger to car accidents. My cousin was in a head-on collision accident and had casts on both of his legs for weeks, he survived, fortunately. I have been hit by a car twice due to the driver being distracted and by the grace of God, had no injuries other than an internal bruise on my arm and my leg. But this goes to say that there needs to be more conversation around distracted drivers and something more effective needs to be done. I propose that there is a passive route to go about reducing the number of deaths related to driving as well as reducing the number of distracted drivers. I propose the idea that could be hosted by a driving school or by university students. By providing an incentive to those within a program or study to see if it works, Possibly with the increase in gas prices there could be an incentive of having those who have a lower rate of phone pickups while behind the wheel be rewarded with a gift card to pay for gas, or within the program, have a weekly goal set for those participating and with a lower rate of phone pickups while driving can increase the amount of money that can be given towards the gas incentive. A way to track the phone pickups with each participant can be to create an app similar to Apple’s Screen time monitoring but specifically for when the participants are driving. The participants would be in charge of notifying the app before getting in the car that they are about to drive and the app would be able to detect how many times the phone has turned on or unlocked until the participants have reached their destination. The number of pickups could then be sent via email to the program or study director for them to record. It is a small idea and sort of out of reach to defeat such a big problem in America but I do believe that it is better than having the death toll for drivers and/ or pedestrians increase every year. I am currently not on the road yet due to high anxiety and many other factors, but I vow to make sure that I am driving for myself and others by respecting speed limits, staying away from drugs and alcohol while operating a vehicle, and always being attentive while on the road and not being apart of the statistics of driving-related deaths.