
Name: Shannon Baker
From: Hagerstown, MD
Votes: 0
Importance of Drivers Safety
This past summer, three boys in my county died in a car crash. Six years ago I sat next to a girl in math class three hours before she died in a car crash. Both of these incidents were a tragedy within my school and community and they completely altered how I drive and who I get in the car with now.
Driver’s education has always been essential to getting a driver’s license, however I sometimes wonder if America is doing enough to truly test the abilities of students before giving them a license. My family once hosted a German exchange student just before he was about to get his driver’s license; he explained to us how he needed to know the answer to around a thousand questions but only 50 of them would show up on his exam. I personally know people in the United States who don’t even study for their driver’s education tests and still pass since there are very few questions on the exams. I do not feel as though our drivers education classes test the knowledge of drivers as thoroughly as they should be. I also feel as though I cannot place all of the blame on the drivers education companies for producing awful drivers because sometimes there are people who are naturally good at test taking but just bad at driving in real conditions. The drivers test on the road is a great way to mimic a real life situation however during covid I did not have to go on the road and only did my test in a parking lot. There are so many students my age who are getting their licenses this way which is awful because it does not produce safe drivers and thus it affects other drivers on the road. As a country I believe we should instill more on the road driving and not only that but driving in different conditions. I live near Interstate-81 which is one of the busiest in the country, and yet my instructor told me it was too hard for me to drive on. That should not have been his ideology but instead he should have encouraged me to tackle merging in a difficult situation while in a safe car where he has the ability to assist me. As a country I believe we need to instill a more rigorous paper test and in person driving tests. As a country, driver safety is the first step in producing safe drivers which will in turn reduce deaths.
I personally have been in the passenger seat of a car in an accident. My brother had just gotten his license and he was driving me home from school when we got distracted by kids playing on the playground and we tapped the car in front of us. It was nothing serious but it was still very scary and I learned the great lesson to never look away from the road. Unfortunately I have also been put in a situation where I was in the car with someone who was under the influence and I was unaware until he hit a deer on the way home. I was unharmed in the situation but once again it was still a traumatic experience that taught me another lesson – always make sure the person driving is sober. Finally I have been in the car with students my age who drive over the speed limit and weave in between cars in a very reckless manner. I have been put in this situation twice and I have never gotten in the car with those students ever again. Driving is scary but sometimes being the passenger and letting others have your life in their hands is even scary. You have to always be aware of who you are with and how to get out of a scary situation in a manner that will not offend the driver. All of these situations happened with kids who were teenagers which leads me to believe another step we could take as a country would be to raise the age to drive and lengthen the time that drivers are allowed to drive others around.
Throughout this essay I’ve acknowledged everyone else’s driving but my own. I would like to consider myself a safe driver who doesn’t tend to drive over the speed limit but if I do it is no more than 5mph. I have never been pulled over nor been scared of being pulled over. I have never come close to being in a relationship with another person. And above all, I took my drivers education seriously to ensure I was a safe driver. Some steps I feel like I could take to become a better driver would be to get more comfortable at merging on the highway. As I mentioned earlier this site was kind of left out of my drivers education class so I am now having to teach myself how to merge onto an interstate filled with large trucks. It is scary and I am getting more comfortable with it but I would like to improve this for myself. One pet peeve of mine is when people don’t use their blinkers. In my opinion blinkers are the main form of communication on the road between you and another driver so when a driver does not use them it is dangerous for everyone.
Overall I think the main ways to reduce accidents and death in driving is to drive with caution and always know your surroundings. Having your mirrors adjusted perfectly for you as well as using your form of communication, blinkers, on the road. Knowing your car and how to use it is essential before even starting to drive. There are many things that each individual can do to be a safer driver but there are also things that the driving schools and america can improve. These include: having more questions on the paper tests, teaching how to merge in the on the road driving class, and having the on the road driving test actually on the road. If these were enforced throughout the country I think we would have better drivers from the start which would reduce accidents.
I hate that I have been surrounded by students my age dying in car crashes since I was 13 years old. There are precautions that we can all take to reduce the risk of this happening. Having a license is a privilege that many of us take for granted as we become more comfortable behind the wheel. Protect your friends, family, and most of all children from unsafe driving by starting internally and fixing how you drive.