Defensive Driving Iniative

The importance of driver education in general is always to prevent accidents of all severity that could change the outcome of you or another person. Basic instruction is required throughout all the different countries in the world because they all share the same problem of tragic and irresponsible accidents. Driver education provides drivers with the essential knowledge on how to operate a vehicle safely and efficiently, while caring for other people’s safety so you can comfortably get to your destination in one piece. Defensive Driving Education is critical in learning how to anticipate or respond to other people’s actions on the roadway that could either put you or someone else in danger. My home State of Maryland puts Defensive Driving as the number one rule of Basic Driving. This is to emphasize the overall quality of learning and reflecting knowledge learned about the road to create a safety barrier to everyone on the roadway.

There are multiple steps to the process of eliminating injuries or deaths caused by driving entirely. First, it takes all of us to create a safe environment for everyone to begin and continue driving throughout their lives, it goes without saying “treat others the way you want to be treated.” Secondly, public awareness is key for members of the general public who may not take driving seriously and cause inconveniences to other drivers to switch their acts and treat others with respect on the road. Thirdly, encouraging safe behaviors and habits that will motivate drivers to continue being safe on the roads. For example, multiple insurance companies offer discount monthly/yearly rates per month just for driving safely. Incentives for simply just driving safely improves public opinion on insurances and quality driving at the same time. Finally, enforcing stronger penalties for unnecessary actions on the road will lead to more people having to accept the socially acceptable way to operate a vehicle and respect the flow of traffic and other surroundings.

A quote that has personally struck me from the time I have been on this earth, is that of “anything can happen from A to B.” Which reflects on the reality that even a short distance of traveling can severely impact your life. I have never been in an accident that was caused by an unnecessary inconvenience created by myself or another individual such as phone usage or aggravated driving. Most have come from lapse in judgment and actual accidents of reaction time and such. After all, we are all human. But, I have seen quite a few instances of terrible and selfish driving that has put multiple people in extravagant danger, with most on the highway where high speed limits creates the psychological thrill of moving fast and biased decision making. Accountability needs to be more prominent in drivers. Switching to a more local standpoint, living in a society where teenagers are seeking as much social acceptance from their peers as possible leads them to doing unimaginable things for popularity. Unfortunately, most of these actions involve cars related to irresponsible driving. As a teenager myself this is the most inconsiderate part of having multiple friend groups that pursue such actions. In my opinion, I feel like some of these actions relate to hazing. But in society it’s swept under the rug as “peer pressure,” or just simply “bad decision making.” People in general need to be held more accountable for their actions.

Furthermore, I believe nobody is perfect, but as we live in this growing society, we should strive to be perfect in things that will improve our livelihoods. Speaking from my experience on the road, as a provisional license holder, everyone is different and we all have different intentions. We just don’t know who has the bad ones. My personal argument that could get a significant portion of the population to be better at driving is that, I think it is adequate for aging drivers to take a test or restart drivers education after a significant period of time to refresh the idea of safe driving. That should greatly decrease the deaths and/or injuries caused by driving by reimplementing knowledge that could have been lost over the years. While most of this essay has been proposed to the general public, there is still responsibility from the government to create a safe environment for drivers on the road by investing funds into road infrastructure. We are all in this together. Promoting safe driving practices for all ages regardless of position, we could implement a sustainable and safe future for all ages in the years to come.