Eyes Open

Driving can be a very freeing aspect of growing older. It allows teenagers to take a break from being stuck at home, and gives them the opportunity to see friends whenever they want to. However this new found freedom blinds people from the dangers of reckless and irresponsible driving. This is why driver’s education can play an important role in teaching new drivers the importance of full attention on the road.

The teachings in driver’s education should most definitely include the rules of the road, and the basic understanding of driving a car, but a large focus of what is taught in the course should be on the importance of attentiveness. A large majority of deaths on the road relate to a lack of attention, whether that be looking at a phone, driving under the influence, or simply just not thinking about driving. When a simple text back to a friend causes someone to look down and move their attention from the road, they have the risk of missing that car merging into their lane. Those 10 seconds of a lack of focus can cause a lifetime of disability or it can cost lives. Maybe someone is having a bad day, and they are thinking about all that went wrong on their way home, but they are too busy thinking about the past that they missed the car that swerved into their lane to avoid a dead deer. They weren’t thinking about the road, and now their car is totaled and they have two broken legs after a collision with the other car. If they had been focused on the road they would have had a faster reaction time, and could have avoided an accident. Being under the influence causes a severe lack of focus. Alcohol and drugs blur the awareness of the brain, so when driving and under the influence there is little to no awareness of what is happening on the road. This creates many unplanned accidents and causes too many deaths to count. All these reasons and more are why awareness and attentiveness are so important in driving. Therefore, it should be a main focus in the education of driving, in order to prevent mistakes and accidents like this.

I personally have three friends who have been in accidents. All three of these people can trace their accidents back to having a lack of attention to what was going on around them. One of my friends has been in two major accidents. The first was when he was a new driver, and he had had his license for about two months. He had gone through Driver’s Ed, and was a decent driver. However, one night on the icy roads of Colorado, he was driving through the forest and ended up getting a text from his mom asking when he would be home. He decided to reply while driving, and missed the stop sign. He ended up driving straight through an intersection and directly into a tree. His car was totaled and the tree only missed him by a few inches. Thankfully, the only injuries he had were minor seat belt burns. His lack of attention for two seconds could have cost his life. A few years later this same friend was merging onto the interstate and was t-boned. He flipped once, yet again still managed to leave the scene without a scratch. However, he cannot remember whether he had a green light to merge or a red light. He was unaware of what was happening on the road. There was no alcohol involved, he simply was just not focused on what was happening around him, which could have cost him or another person their life. I have two other friends who were in accidents based on not paying attention to what was ahead of them. Thankfully, none of these accidents ended in deaths or injuries, because it very likely could have ended differently for them. Unfortunately, it does end differently for many many others.

Understanding that driving is a fun, exciting invention for the world, but also a very dangerous and powerful thing in the world is extremely important. We cannot forget that when we are driving we need to be driving, and only driving. If we were flying a plane we would not lose focus of what we were doing, because we understand the risks of flying in a plane. The risks of driving need to be more apparent in drivers education, and the importance of paying full attention to the road needs to be extremely apparent in the class.

Overall, attention and awareness are key aspects of driving a vehicle, and they should be extremely important to the teachers of driving schools, and to any new and experienced driver, because far too many accidents occur based on simple things like looking at a phone and losing focus of what is ahead of them on the road.