Educating Drivers For a Safer Tomorrow

Before
any teen driver is allowed to get their licence, they must pass a
drivers ed class. Teens dread going to drivers ed and
don’t realize that it is an integral part of helping to reduce the
amount of deaths from driving. Why is it so imporatant? Well, in
drivers ed you learn a lot more than rules of the road and
safety tips. Often, they use videos and photos to illustrate what can
happen if you do not drive safely. These visual aids are often
disturbing and sad. This combination of lessons and real life
examples is very effective in conveying the importance of learning
and following the rules as well as the consequences of distracted,
impaired, or unsafe driving. Drivers ed puts all drivers in
the same lane. Besides mandating everyone to pass drivers ed before
they take their driving test, other ways to reduce the number of
deaths from driving are to eliminate distractions and make sure that
drivers are practicing safe driving throughout their lives. What I
suggest is technology that interacts between phones and cars that
will autolock your phone when the car is in drive. The driver would
only be able to access the bluetooth functions on their phone, so
they could still make emergency calls. I also feel that all drivers,
regardless of age, should be randomly chosen to retake their drivers
test every two years to ensure they continue to practice safe driving
techniques throughout their lives.

In
October of 2018, myself and a couple friends were driving home from
Six Flags when we got into an accident. At the time of the accident,
I had only been driving for 6 months and was trying to find my way
home with the use of my phone GPS. I started to change lanes and
collided with another car in the lane. The accident was my fault. I
was distracted by my GPS and didn’t look fully over my shoulder.
Luckily, no one was hurt in this accident, but, after the accident I
was terrified to change lanes or to even drive for quite awhile. I
learned an important lesson that night about driving while distracted
and since then have never received a citation or had an accident
again. Anytime I need to use a GPS to get somewhere now, I make sure
to set it up before I leave. I set it up so it talks to me so I
don’t have to look down to see where to turn next. I also choose
not to use my phone while driving, and I offer to make calls or look
up directions for people when I am the passenger. I remind myself and
the people I care about of the real costs of unsafe driving. If
everyone took drivers ed, followed the rules of the road, and
helped each other to not use our phones, we could significantly
reduce the number of deaths by driving.