A Shift In Driver Education

It’s terrifying driving a stick-shift car and stopping on a hill. My Mazda rolls back and hits the car behind me if I don’t stop it. It’s unnerving. On a hill, I pull up hard on the handbrake and hold onto the lever (for dear life!) to anchor myself as I wait with some trepidation for the red light to turn green. Learning to drive a manual car is a huge endeavor, but it definitely has its rewards. 

The importance of driver education in reducing the number of deaths due to driving is enormous. Driving is essential to life. Everybody drives. Regardless of intelligence, style, mood, or handicaps, everyone is a risk on the road and a risk to others. The most basic skill that can be learned about driving is the rules; this is why driver education is so important. If someone violates a rule, then a car crash could result. Driver education is also about learning to drive defensively and anticipating various dangerous scenarios. A new, inexperienced driver is not as experienced as trained driver education instructors. Instructors can introduce options before they are encountered on the road. In this way, drivers will be more prepared to make a split decision that could save their life. 

The steps that can be taken to reduce the number of deaths related to driving is to pass laws to limit the amount of social technology in the cars. Distracted driving is one of the leading causes of automobile accidents. The automobile manufacturers are not making it any easier to eliminate distracted driving. Tesla now has a dashboard computer screen the size of a desktop monitor loaded with Bluetooth phone apps on their new cars that competes with the driver’s attention on the road. Penalties for distracted driving could be raised until the economic risk of driving while distracted becomes too much of a burden to bear for the driver. Policing distracted driving requires the driver to admit fault, which would be problematic unless verified via electronic data. Drunk driving is more detectable than distracted driving! Unlike distracted driving, authorities can elicit quantifiable data to prove different degrees of sobriety in drunk driving. Until a system is created that can generate verifiable data like cameras inside vehicles, drivers will continue to get away with distracted driving. Until the risks or penalties become too great, drivers will continue to multitask in their car if they consistently get rewarded in snippets of time that they’ve saved by reading emails or making phone calls that convert to cost savings. 

I have had the experience of being in a car accident, and it is scary. My mother and I were stopped at a red light, and another car hit us from behind. The driver behind us was distracted as we all waited at a red traffic light. He thought that the light had changed and gunned his engine and his car careened into the back of our vehicle! Oddly, I had no idea what had happened because it was unexpected and sudden. I was surprised that everything in the car was suddenly.  a mess. The airbags had deployed, and I had no idea why. It was shocking how sudden everything changed. We always had our seat belts on, so we did not suffer any injuries, but the car was in the shop for a month!

The steps I’ve taken to be a better and safer driver have been to drive double the hours required to earn my license. More experience means more skills. Another very unusual way to be safer that I’ve done is to be a stick-shift driver. It’s impossible to text, eat, or hold a phone when I have to use my right hand to shift the gears. The most important part about driving a stick is to read the road. Needing to shift the gears myself forces me to pay more attention to the road and make decisions quickly. My friends don’t need to focus so fiercely when driving their automatic cars because their cars make those decisions. That is the difference between my friends and me. They drive cars, but I’m a driver. I’m a stick shift driver! I have to stay more focused on the road and look ahead at the grade and the curve in case I need to shift.

An innovative idea that could help others become safer on the road by requiring new drivers to drive manual cars for two years before driving an automatic. Also, outlaw distracting technology like huge monitors in the vehicle. This idea does not seem so outlandish when you compare it to pilots who have to fly small airplanes, commuter flights, and, eventually, big jetliners. There should be a progression of cars that people have to drive like the progression of planes pilots fly. We don’t give 10-speed bicycles to toddlers to ride! When learning to ride a bike, there is a progression of bikes that kids transition through until they are ready for the final adult version. It should be the same with driving cars. I drive both stick shift and automatic vehicles and notice the difference in the skills required. 

Detours in life make me drive down roads I never thought I’d travel. Driver education prepares you for these unseen roads before you encounter them and teaches you how to handle them. I can have a destination in mind, but I now know that I often don’t get to choose the roads that get me there. I am a more confident and capable driver because I took driver education, so encountering new roads that I didn’t intend to be on allows me to enjoy the ride. Avoiding all the barricades, potholes, detours, and continual construction, I realized that it wasn’t my manual car teaching me how to read the road, it was me!