To Drive, You Must First Be Able to Think

To Drive, You Must First Be Able
to Think

For
many people, drivers ed is a natural step in the process of
getting a driver’s license. You spend a day learning about the
importance of safety, paying attention, and what to do in emergency.
After that comes the hours of practice with your parents and an
instructor. For some, this is all they need to emerge with their
license in hand as a fully capable and safe driver. For others, the
message just did not quite seem to sink in. I live in a city where
haphazard driving is the norm. It is no surprise when several cars
turn left after the light is red, people pull into the intersection
preventing others from going once the light changes, or someone rides
your tail the entire way home even while you are going the speed
limit. Even my parents have begun making slight conformities, going
over the speed limit or making a turn right before the light changes.
The crazy part is, drivers ed and forty hours of practice
are required to even get a restricted license in my state. The basics
of safety seem to go in one ear and out the other. We are being
taught what things you must do to be safe driver, but are we being
taught how to be one?

My
drivers ed course was excellent. The instructors were
engaged, informative, and taught us everything we needed to know how
to drive. There is are pieces missing, however, that are not up to
the instructors to teach us. Students are taught which is the gas and
which is the brake, but are they being taught logic, focus, patience,
and compassion? As out of place as they may seem, these four are key
concepts to being a good, safe driver. A driver with logic will obey
the laws, having come to an understanding of their purpose. One with
focus will be aware of everything around them. Another with patience
will not push ahead for their own purposes, ignoring the law in the
process, and still another with compassion will respect other
drivers, acknowledging that they are not the only person on the road.
Bringing together these characteristics with a quality driver’s
education would save thousands of people heartache and pain every
year.

How
do students learn to apply these attributes? They cannot be easily
incorporated into a single day of a drivers ed class. No,
the teaching of these qualities must come from outside of the driving
school. Parents who take the time to instruct their children in these
virtues are investing in a brighter future for their child, not only
as a driver, but as a student, worker, and human being. This
responsibility does not fall solely on them though. Friends,
teachers, and even random strangers can be carriers of this message,
speaking to driving students through their actions. To begin
developing these qualities in others, however, we must first
demonstrate them in ourselves. The driving students of the future
will not benefit in any way more than us if we continue to model
irrationality, distractedness, impatience, and rudeness as the
characteristics associated with driving. If there is to be hope of
safer roads and less accident-related heartache, we must transform
ourselves, determining to be an example to everyone coming after us.