Life-Saving Experience

On an evening in April 2014,
I rushed to look out my living room window as a motorcycle revved its
engines and rocketed down my street. That evening, the rider collided
with the back end of a car while traveling roughly 100 MPH on the
freeway, suffering brain damage and permanent left arm paralysis. The
person operating that motorcycle was my neighbor, someone my family
had come to know well. Mistakes like this can be prevented, and it is
all rooted in education. A strong drivers ed is the basis for
rationality and safety on the road. However, as it currently stands,
the drivers ed system is not suited to create safe drivers,
nor is it fostering a safe environment on the road.

One overarching problem with
drivers ed is the lack of road experience it provides. The
standard number of practice drives that a student completes in
driving school is inadequate driving time with an instructor, roughly
the equivalent of one school day. Students are not expected to learn
a year’s worth of content in one school day, so why are they
expected, after a few hours driving with instructors, to be set for a
lifetime of safe driving? The experience, intuition and sense that
one must gain for driving only come from practicing. However, teens
are often not incentivized to practice to truly become better
drivers, but rather just to pass the test and many times, the number
of hours that an individual has practiced is not verified.

To solve this, a revision of
the drivers ed process is needed. Students must have more
time in a vehicle with a certified instructor, as instructors are
prepared to correct mistakes and instill safe habits in students. To
allow for this, the number of required practice drives in driving
school should be increased. In addition, students should have to log
a minimum number of hours before taking a driver’s test, and an
instructor should verify the number of hours a student has behind the
wheel. Perhaps a large portion of these hours could be completed with
an instructor. Furthermore, an individual’s brain is not fully
developed until they are 25 years of age. Thus, raising the minimum
age in which one can obtain a driver’s license may greatly increase
the safety of the roads, giving one’s judgement and reasoning
skills more time to mature.

Those who are not educated
well and do not have significant driving experience are not going to
be proficient drivers, at least not in their first several years of
driving. Safety and intuition only come with experience. Humans are
imperfect, and thus car accidents will always occur, but action can
be taken to drastically reduce the number of them. I always remind
myself and others to drive safely, and express my concern if I am in
a car with an unsafe driver, because it is uncertain who may end up
like my next door neighbor, or even worse.