The Importance of Driver Education….Mostly Seat Belts

Did you know that approximately 52% of car accidents happen a block away from your home? Citizens assume that since it’s “so close to home” seat belts aren’t required. Luckily my Meema wasn’t a part of the statistics. On August 23, 1997, she went down the street to check on a driver who was pulled over on the side of the road. Once the driver assured her of his safety she tried to make a U-turn and a Dooley came out of nowhere. He hit the front of her car, sending her into a spiral of turns throwing her into the passenger side. She was luckily wearing a seatbelt. The injuries she sustained were, but were not limited to a hangman’s fracture, broken right femur, broken left ankle, shattered all the ribs on her right side, shattered right scapula, degloved right arm, and a punctured right lung requiring two chest tubes. She is currently in medical books for surviving a hangman’s fracture. Without a seat belt, she doesn’t think she would be alive.

Wearing a seat belt is a part of driver education. Driving with a seat belt decreases your risk of death by 45%. Seat belts aren’t the only thing that causes death to drivers. Being aware of the weather conditions, not being on your phone, and not speeding are role players too. My Uncle Mo could take part in these things. On October 29, 2009, he was driving in the rain going 80 mph on a back road to Lubbock, Tx. In a split second of looking at his phone, he hydroplaned and after his truck rolled twice he was ejected 63 feet from the crash site. On the way to the hospital, he flatlined twice, once he made it they put him in a 12 day medically induced coma. His injuries consisted of 27 broken bones, from t-12 vertebrae and below was all fractured, every rib but one was broken, both collar bones shattered, both shoulder blades broken, right pelvis broken, left arm broken, punctured left lung, and three bleeders in his brain. It’s crazy that if he didn’t pick up his phone he wouldn’t have been in such a tragic accident. To this day my uncle has had 30 surgeries, taken every kind of pain pill you can think of, has a Morphine Pump surgically implanted in his stomach for pain, has a Spinal Cord Stimulator surgically implanted in his back to send shock waves to his legs.

I’m sure everyone thinks these are all common sense things. Some days I can catch myself on my phone while driving. It’s scary seeing how addicted I am to my phone that I’m willing to put myself and others at risk for it. I can say the same about speeding. It’s so easy to keep going 75 on a 65 and feeling the adrenaline of passing other cars. But driver education needs to be implemented more. I think we should start young. Take driver safety courses before we can get our permits. I sound like a broken record about seatbelts, speeding, and phone usage while driving but it can be truly detrimental to yourself and the community. Another topic I would like to talk about is driving while intoxicated. My dad was an alcoholic, he constantly drove with me and my sister while drunk. It was so traumatic I remember when I got back with my mom I would sit and cry from being so scared. Drinking and driving is common amongst adults but highly seen around teenagers. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), 28 people die every day due to a drinking and driving-related crash.

The statistics are mind-blowing and unreal. I wanted to advocate for safer driving and for driver education to be more widely accessible. Writing about this topic makes me motivated to push for driver education in my community. I hope that my stories can spread awareness. I plan to change the way I drive and to take more precautions when I get behind the wheel. I won’t drink at all due to my dad’s alcoholism, I will always wear my seatbelt, be cautious of the weather/others, and change my screen time to none while behind the wheel. My life is way more important than a text message or a snap from Snapchat. I believe I took a different toll on the essay prompt but I hope I was able to get my point across and spread awareness about driver education.