Steps Taken to Reduce the Number of Deaths While Driving

 

This essay explains the important steps that a driver, the community, and companies need to take to reduce driving accidents.

Being handed keys to a car is more of a duty than some may realize. The responsibility you take in the driver’s seat is for your own life and others around you. In America, an average of 34,000 people die each year because of driving accidents. With that statistic, that means that as new drivers we need to be very careful about the things we do behind the wheel. There are many steps that a driver, the community, and companies need to take to reduce driving accidents.

As a driver, you need to understand the responsibility of receiving your license. This is a privilege that you worked to earn. You need to have respect for others and yourself before you can go off and drive alone. Having respect means making sure you’re doing everything right inside the car, in hopes of making sure nothing goes wrong on the outside. This includes using technology while driving. Even the technology that is placed inside your car can be harmful. Changing a song, turning up and down the volume, checking the time, can all contribute to countless seconds that you are not paying attention to the roads ahead of you. One glance is all it takes to miss something that can be prevented. Even checking your miles per hour or gas fuel tank are things that you need to be careful of. Everything you do in a car has to be done carefully, logically, and thoughtfully. The steps you can take in the car is making sure your phone is put out of eyesight. There’s no need to have any sort of temptation with you in the car, everything can be put on hold until your car is safely parked. Then make sure you are vigilant while you are driving. Loud music may be tempting while taking a long trip to the grocery store, but to be safe, you should be able to hear all that is going on around you. Doing these things keeps others and you safe, you just have to trust that the other drivers are as safe as you.

Steps the community can take are as important as the steps that drivers take themselves. The communities in any town can put more money into bettering the road conditions for the drivers. Potholes are more dangerous than most let on. Some cars may hit the pothole, which may cause an issue with their car or can startle the driver into reacting in a negative way. Some drivers may swerve to avoid the pothole but not pay attention to the other things going on around them and could hit a car, curb or person. By fixing up the roads, it can avoid little things like this that can make huge mistakes. Another thing is we can start putting a lot more stop lights around, a 4 way stop sign can cause some huge issues, especially with new drivers that might not know the rules of the road, or even ignorant driver’s that need to get where they need to go. With stop lights, if someone rude is late to work, they can not just drive right through the stop.

Companies can even take action to reduce the amount of accidents on the roads too. With distracting billboards and phones there’s many ways that big corporate businesses can help on the roads too. Billboards may be a good way for them to advertise their products, but with the flashy lights or hard to read messages, it can distract the driver just long enough for them to make an unchangeable mistake. With so many other ways for companies to advertise with technology increasing, there is no reason for them to be along the roads. Phone companies can do their part too. They need to incorporate their systems with ways that can identify when a person is driving and ways to prevent them by scrolling through their phones. As some may be passengers, it may be hard to put this in place but with phones already identifying your miles per hour while driving, it seems like it is something that can be done. Maybe just a little notification that stops the driver from texting can keep them in check enough to look back at the road. By taking these steps, we can create a safer and comforting driving environment for all drivers.