A Driver’s Duty

When I was 2 years
old I was in my first car accident. Strapped into my chair in the
backseat, I couldn’t even have known what was going on when a
pickup ran a red light and T-boned my parents and I in the middle of
the intersection. My mom and I were on the damaged side. I was lucky
– my chair protected me – but my mom was rushed to the hospital with
some injuries. She made a full recovery, but I doubt she will ever
forget the vision of a car headed towards her at full speed.

Cars are a tool.
Like any tool, they’re extremely useful. They are big, and they
move very quickly. Most American families have 2 or 3 cars, and most
people who don’t live in large cities use their car every single
day. Driving is a necessity for many people’s daily lives, and for
many teens, a chance to experience what feels like pure freedom. You
can take yourself where you’d like, pick up who you’d like, at
whatever time you’d like.

Cars are a tool, and
like any tool, not knowing how to use them is extremely dangerous. If
you handed someone a power tool when they’d never used one before,
you’re asking for trouble. It’s important to teach standardized
safety measures to everyone who is allowed to use a car, in order to
protect themselves and everyone else on the road.

This is why driver’s
education is crucial. Yes, the practical learning of rules and
understanding of how a car works and everything is important, but
one’s drivers ed should go well beyond that. When a
person finishes their driving instruction, they should have a
wholehearted understanding of the power they hold when they sit in
the driver’s seat. You have the power to go places, to explore, to
provide for yourself and others! But you also have the power to hurt,
to kill, to cause unimaginable pain. I don’t want to think about
how my life would have been different if my mother hadn’t been so
lucky to recover fully.

Truth be told, I
failed my license test. When I took it, I was pretty confident I
would pass; I’d done a lot of driving my my dad, for hours at a
time, learning to manoeuvre on the freeway between semi-trucks and
tankers. After completing a stellar back-in parking job, I was
distraught when my evaluator told me I’d failed. I had been
unsuccessful in two separate “critical driving skills” – messing
up on only one is an automatic fail. I was pretty livid at first. I’d
come in thinking, “This test should be easy! It’s only driving,
afterall, right?” Wrong. Honestly, I’m glad I failed my test.
Realizing that it was better to fail and not be allowed on the road
than to pass and be an unsafe driver allowed me to develop my sense
of duty as a driver, which I think everyone should have.