Driving Safety

Driving
Safely

Car
crashes are one of the leading causes of death in America. They cause
roughly 34,000 deaths per year, which is more than two years’ worth
of American soldiers lost in Iraq and Afghanistan war combined. Many
of these fatalities are due to driver error. It should; however, be
noted that not all accidents are on the fault of the driver. There
are three main categories of driving risks: driver related, vehicle
related, and environment or roadway related. Each of these categories
have unique attributes that make them challenging to deal with, and
sometimes occur at the same time.

Driver
related risks largely include human error. These include things such
as distracted driving, having a lapse in judgement, or failing to
notice potential dangers. I believe that to help minimize these and
some other types of risks, a basic driving safety course should be
required before getting your license. This would be a simple course
teaching about what you should look out for while driving and how to
respond to those potential dangers. It would also teach about the
dangers and statistics of distracted driving, such as texts typically
taking roughly five seconds to type and the distance you travel in
those five seconds.

Vehicle
related risks typically center around vehicular malfunctions. These
would include occurrences such as balding tires, electrical issues,
and general maintenance. If these issues are not tracked and
maintained, the vehicle could have major issues such as a lack of
traction, a loss of electrical signals to certain components, or a
variety of other dangerous effects. These could include transmission
failure, brake failure, a lack of headlights, or a near infinite
amount of issues that could affect your control of the vehicle, your
safety in the vehicle, or your visibility of the roadway. These can
sometimes be very dangerous and cause accidents if they happen at the
wrong time. I’d suggest that in the course mentioned previously,
having a segment dedicated to vehicle maintenance, including things
like instructions for checking oil and changing tires.

The
final risk factors I will be covering are environmental and roadway
risks. Environmental risks include bright sun, rain, snow, ice, and
extreme weathers such as storms. Roadway risks include damaged
roadways, construction, and general roadway quality. In my area the
roads are very damaged and of low quality, with some having parts
that have slid down the mountain. This combined with their sharp
turns and even light rain can make driving extremely difficult
compared to many other places. I’ve never personally been in any
accidents, but people get in accidents all the time around here, and
even sometimes pass away from those accidents. While there should
certainly be a segment in the aforementioned driver safety course on
extreme weathers and low quality roads, the state roads should be
maintaining the roads specifically due to situations such as this.