Turning Mario Kart Drivers into Safe Drivers

One of the best video games I knew growing up was Mario Kart Wii. There’s a certain thrill as an eight-year-old to having your own steering wheel to race your friends on the TV. Endless hours of my childhood were spent mastering the courses, beating the top times, and destroying my inept opponents, also known as my two brothers.

So one day, as I was knocking off opponents one by one on the addictive Mario Kart, my family came through the front door dead silent. Not noticing anything, I said hello and kept playing. Then, my dad came up to me and gave me a big hug. Annoyed at the interruption of my Grand Prix beatdown, I paused the game and almost lashed out. But the grave look on his face told me something had happened. Just minutes before the rest of my family barely escaped a dangerous situation on the road. In the middle of winter in Iowa, the roads can be unpredictable. Not two miles away from our house, our family’s minivan started spinning out of control on the interstate. Barely missing the semi-truck behind them, my dad managed to pull the car to the side of the road but it slipped and started going down a hill next to it. And the car was going backward. The car smoothly went down the slope, and my startled family silently drove the rest of the way home.

There were a few reasons this story did not have a worse ending. The first is my dad was a watchful driver whose full attention was on the road. Far too many drivers today are distracted by cell phones. In Mario Kart, if you take your eyes off the road, you put yourself in danger of going off the track. In real life, doing so presents a danger to you and the vehicles around you. Everyone knows the danger of distracted driving, but I believe in the value of continued pressure on using a cell phone while driving. Many states have laws in place outlawing the usage of cell phones while operating a vehicle on the road, but its enforcement is often lacking. Advertisement campaigns through commercials and social media posts are effective in encouraging drivers to put their phones away while on the road, for it reaches citizens online where they spend a lot of their free time.

The second reason is my dad knew what to do in the situation. Rather than stopping the car in the middle of the road, he tried to pull the car to an area where others could pass safely. While this did not work out completely as planned in the story above, it did prevent others from being involved in an accident. My dad’s knowledge of what to do came from years of experience driving. This experience that millions of drivers across the country have is available to newer drivers through driver education. Driver education prevents automobile accidents and deaths because it gives the training driver experience on the road, a foundation of safe driving, and tips on what to do in certain scenarios. This enables thousands of new drivers to set out with the preparation and confidence that is needed for safer roads.

Finally, my dad knew the terrain he was driving on and understood the caution he needed to take while driving that day. In the middle of winter, there were bound to be ice spots on the road, so my dad didn’t follow the car in front of him too closely, kept his speed lower than usual, and took roads he knew would likely be safer during that time of year. Knowing the condition of the roads and taking appropriate precautionary steps is a third way drivers can reduce fatalities. However, this changes with geography and the style of roads across the country. While the roads my family drove on in Iowa were large, straight interstates, when we moved to Georgia we drove a lot more on tight highways that twist and turn. Roads are different throughout the United States. So, communities should take steps to place appropriate traffic signs to warn drivers of the danger on their roads, work with their state’s Department of Transportation to invest in repaving and fixing roads, and always be prepared for the weather changes in their climatic regions.

Too often, drivers in real life want to drive like its Mario Kart. The reality is there’s no prize for being the fastest in real life. The only prizes available are accidents and deaths because of reckless and distracted drivers on the road. Younger drivers such as myself need to remember the lessons of staying off our cell phones while driving, knowing what to do in situations that could result in accidents, and knowing the condition of our roads so that we can take precautionary steps to be safer drivers. Taking simple steps like these can help reduce the number of driving fatalities in the United States, a prize that’s worth winning.