Impact of Driver’s Education on Saving Lives

I never met my uncle. My dad’s only brother. He died riding in a car with a drunk driver before my dad even turned 30. My dad was so devastated by the loss and missed his brother so much that when my older brother was born, my parents gave him my late uncle’s name as his middle name. According to my mom, I have my uncle’s peculiar right ear. I just have to take their word for it though. That’s something I would have liked to see in person, but I never will. My uncle wasn’t hit by a drunk driver, or unknowingly riding in a car with someone who’d been drinking or tricked into thinking that his friend hadn’t been drinking. He made a bad choice to get in a car with friends, all of whom had been drinking together, and head out into the night. He just trusted that the driver wasn’t too much under the influence to drive them all.

He was wrong.

Just minutes into their ride away from my uncle’s home in Colorado, their car failed to make a sharp 90 degree turn and flew off the road into a cement drainage ditch. The only survivor was the drunk driver. My uncle and the two other passengers in the back seat were all killed. As a kid, that story was the part of the fabric of my family that brought sadness and regret for sure. But I never stopped to consider the “why” of it until I became old enough learn to drive and get my own driver’s license.

You see, I have ASD and learning for me can take a lot longer than it does for a nondisabled person. I was super nervous about trying to learn to drive and about trying to feel safe. I wasn’t sure I would be able to succeed at driving a car on my own so I kept putting off learning. Having my parents teach me about driving and practicing with me in the car was not enough to help me feel like I could do it. So, we got online with driver’s education websites and our local DMV site so I could learn and practice. They signed me up for driver’s education classes with an instructor, in the car. The more I learned, the more I practiced, the more confident and empowered I felt. I started to really feel like one day I’d be able to drive a car on my own too. It was months of online drivers’ education learning and practice with the driver’s education handbook we picked up at the DMV before I was ready to try the written test. There was so much information to remember that I wasn’t sure I’d ever learn enough.

I didn’t pass my online test on the first or second try. But thankfully the driver’s education process is about learning, not getting it right the first time. I stuck with it and did learn it. I eventually passed the written test, the drug and alcohol course test and the driving test to get my learners permit and finally my license. I was a huge achievement for me. But an unexpected bonus was the very real, important information I learned about driving and safety. I learned how the science of speed and weather conditions really are important to being safe behind the wheel. I learned that understanding road signs and right-of-way aren’t just extra information that is good to know. They are actually essential if you want to be a good driver.

But maybe most significantly, I learned why I lost my uncle.

During the drug and alcohol part of the driver’s education, I learned that making smart decisions about not driving “under the influence” or riding with a driver that may be “under the influence” means making decisions ahead of time. There are actual measurements of body weight, and time, and alcohol consumption that prove a person is impaired even if they don’t appear to be, or they argue that they aren’t. There is also the impact of alcohol on our ability to make those reasonable observations when we find ourselves already in the middle of a decision-making situation. I may think I’m able to make decisions about my impairment or a friend’s impairment when the math and science say I really can’t. I believe that’s probably where my uncle went wrong. Just like the driver’s education classes indicated, you make the decision to not drink and drive or not ride with a person who has been drinking long before you start socializing. The science is clear and protecting myself and others is about remembering what I learned during my driver’s education. I’m glad I needed all of the extra class time working on my driver’s education. It’s made me smarter driver. I know drivers education makes all of us smarter drivers if we take the time to learn.