Not One Fault

During
my freshman year of high school, a student was hit by a car and
killed. It was dark outside so the driver didn’t see the student,
and he didn’t cross the street in a designated cross walk because
there weren’t any nearby. Now we have more cross walks that flash
lights when someone crosses the street accompianed with signs telling
cars that pedestrians have the right of way.

Despite
all of this new technology to help students stay safe whether they
walk or
drive to school, I don’t think that it should have been necessary.
Ordinarily, the speed limit is 40 miles per hour, but during school
hours the limit is reduced to 25 miles per hour. It’s less likely
that a person hit by a car going by that speed limit would die, but
also if the car was going slower, it would have been easier to brake
and avoid hitting the student all together.

But
not everything is the driver’s fault. The student should have
crossed at the cross walk. There should be street lights for the
mornings when it’s extremely dark. All these factors went into this
accident, and it’s due to all of them that it happened. It’s not
just the drivers that need to be educated – students need to be
taught the dangers of being around cars from a young age. Driver’s
need to retain their knowledge from drivers ed, and they need to
be more accountable for following the speed limit. The local
government needs to have safety precautions in place for all schools,
but most especially high schools, since they’re most likely to have
new drivers driving there each day.

What’s
most important in reducing car accidents and the deaths that result
from them besides speeding is distracted driving. Using one’s phone
simply for Google Maps can be problematic when driver’s look down
at the small map – taking their eyes of the road – even to just
quickly double check they’re going the right way. Anything can
happen on the road at anytime, and any distraction can deter the
driver from safely avoiding the situation, or at the very least,
lessening the damage.

It’s
not just teens that will text and drive – I’ve been in cars with
adults that do it too. I think intersections would be a good place
for either police to look for drivers that text at red lights, or at
the least camers, so that tickets would get sent to their address
later. This would be a way to discourage texting at intersections,
which is when most people tend to check their phones because they
find this to be the safest time to do so. Without a “safe time”
to do this while on the road, this will lead to driver’s to be more
likely to pull over into a parking lot if checking their phone is
that necessary, thus reducing driving-related deaths or accidents.