A Decision’s Impact

Most anyone who has been through the American education system will tell you that one cannot afford to actually retain the information they’re studying. It’s too time-consuming, and, really, they pose, you won’t need much of it in the long run, right? “Do you think the average pencil pusher can tell the difference between animal and plant cells?” they jest. Hardly anyone takes school seriously.

That same methodology does not apply to driver education, and for good reason. You can’t afford to skim through the driver handbook the night before your written assessment, let alone before you sit behind the wheel for the first time. Unlike your average school subject, everything in driver education can and should be applied to your day to day. It should be taken as seriously as a court hearing. Driver’s ed is important in reducing the death rate because it establishes the importance of sober driving, confidence when driving, and interacting with others on the road, to name just a handful of concepts. Inattentiveness when it comes to driving etiquette can result in serious- and fatal- consequences. Without these key components in your wheelhouse, instilled through driver’s education, the likelihood of you making fatal mistakes skyrockets.

Worry not, however- there are a multitude of steps and methods that everyone can implement into their driving practices in order to ease the nerves of everyone on the road. Truly, these “tips and tricks” boil down to simply being mindful when behind the wheel. Many of these steps are simply things people tend to forget about after a while.

A prime example lies within the saying “Practice makes progress.” Often overlooked and undervalued, it actually is perfectly applicable to reducing the number of fatal driving incidents. So many students have had to transition from lives as homebodies to life “out in the field” over the past few years. Imagine going from zero to one hundred so quickly, from online school or work to suddenly having to move from the comfort of your home. Naturally, one would doubt their driving skills. Building confidence is key in combating this, and is something that all drivers should look to do. The simple act of practicing driving with a loved one in an empty parking lot drastically reduces the risk of injuring others on populated roads. You might scrutinize yourself, wishing you could just cut to the chase instead of taking time out of your weekend to meander around cones in a barren school parking lot. However, going out of your way to ensure the safety of the drivers and pedestrians around you in such a way is well worth those “wasted” hours.

An additional step that benefits everyone on and around the road is to eliminate any and all distractions. This applies to both fledgling drivers and veterans. As a callback to the previous point, timid drivers should not be fiddling with the radio when they are hardly able to make a turn. Even when you have garnered experience, distractions still plague you: eating while operating your vehicle, interacting boisterously with passengers, just to name a couple. Safety should be every driver’s number one priority, and distractions impede it. According to national police-reported data collected in 2019, reported by IIHS, over 3,000 people died in crashes where distractions were concluded to be a factor. This contributes to nine percent of all crash deaths that year. Technology poses the biggest threat by far in terms of distractions, however. From that same collection of data, it was determined that 422 of those people died in crashes where cell phone use was a contributing factor. We do not even need the data to deduce that people use their phones while driving. You have certainly seen it: a driver lagging at your side, crossing their eyes in an attempt to concentrate on their phone instead of the road ahead of them. Drivers are put on edge after seeing such blatant irresponsibility, as the perpetrator is putting the entire freeway at risk. With the simple decision to save whatever awaits you for later, you are doing both the people around you and those you love personally a huge favor. The potential risk is never worth the momentary reward.

Though I have thankfully never experienced an accident myself, I have learned through observation of those close to me. Multiple times throughout my life, my family has needed to drop their itinerary to meet another close family member at the hospital. We have landed on both sides of the coin: both floundering around a victim of reckless driving and the person who harmed themselves and others. It is terrifying to realize that someone close to you is riding the fine line between life and death, all because of a decision that took someone a mere moment to make. Nobody thinks that they will be ending someone’s life merely because they picked that day to drive. No death due to a car accident is predisposed.