Attentive Driving

Eric Smith

6/30/2019

Driver Education Initiative Award – Scholarship Opportunity

Drivers education for new drivers is very important. It gives specific instructions from professionals on how to perform on the road. Instead informal teaching from family and friends. The informal teaching isn't wrong but isn’t the best for new drivers because the professional teaching not only prepares you for what to come on the road but to also what to be aware of when encountering certain situations. Drivers ed is a gradual step process, the instructors don’t just allow you to hop in a vehicle and drive unlike a lot of at home teachings from family and friends. Instructors have planning and know how to go about teaching certain students when coming in to receive a driver's license.

To reduce the deaths related to driving, we should be stricter on newer drivers. There should be rules and regulations emplaced in every state that are similar, so that every new driver can live by. For the drivers that are not new there should be classes that could be offered everywhere school, workplaces, etc. that give the statistics of driving accidents. Making the people aware of what is going on daily to make them second guess a lot of what they do on the road. Something that could take place once every six months or annually just to let the people know that fatal driving accidents are real and a lot of them could have been avoided if they put down a phone, or focused more on the road, or didn’t multitask while driving.

I have been in a handful of accidents, but there is one that stood out to me the most. A few friends and I were coming back from another college and the driver of the vehicle fell asleep at the wheel. That experience opened my eyes a lot more to driving accidents and how they can affect your life at a blink of an eye. Luckily in my situation there weren't any major injuries in the situation, but a lesson learned from the situation and that lesson was to follow you first instinct with riding and driving with friends. At the beginning of the drive we asked the friend that was driving the vehicle was he tired he replied no but his signs and body language said otherwise. Those type of lessons should be taught to new drivers how to pay attention to the driver of the vehicle and how to take over when necessary or know how to talk to people out of making those crazy decisions.

Steps I can take to be a better and safer driver is paying more attention than I already do to the road. Don’t let things distract me phone, music, anything that could deter me from what I need to be doing and that’s driving. I could allow my phone to be put on a certain setting when driving. I could also move slower sometimes I often move very fast in a lot of situations. I could slow down my pace. Road rage to when I want to spazz out I could breath and think ad relax.

https://www.dmvedu.org/scholarship/