For most teens, getting your drivers license is one of the highlights of high school. It's a ticket to the open road, endless memories with friends, and most importantly, new found freedom. Many teens take their new car keys and drive around without a single thought about how dangerous it is to operate a 2 ton vehicle at high speeds everyday. Especially considering the distractions, anxiety, and overstimulation that occur often in each inexperienced driver's vehicle.
Teen driver safety is a critical public issue, as thousands of lives are lost or permanently changed each year due to reckless or inexperienced teen drivers. It affects them, their families, other drivers on the road, and even the pedestrians. The consequences of one inexperienced teen driver are countless, and extend throughout the entire community. Drivers Ed classes are crucial to ensure that each teen is equipped with the knowledge, skills, and awareness they need to make safe choices on the road. Unfortunately, driver's education is not always held in high regard by teens. When I was taking Drivers Ed my sophomore year of high school, we didn't have any hands-on experience, didn't learn how to manage stressful situations, and most concerning of all, over half of the students were not paying attention. They cheated on the chapter tests, slept through class, or hid their phone behind a book and watched the latest episode of their favorite show. At the end of it all, we all got our licenses after countless hours of class. It was one of the best days of the year, and I had never been more excited to get in the car. My friends in the class had similar sentiments. Unfortunately, the drivers that did not know their way around the road also joined us with brand new licenses.
As more and more of my peers entered the road for the first time, the more dangerous the school parking lot got. Fender-benders, dents, scratches, and even hitting into other students were an everyday occurrence. It was a war zone, filled with honking horns and eardrum-shattering music. I wish I could tell you that the war was contained, but with every minute the clock ticked past two o'clock, the more the war spread onto the roads surrounding the school. No adult said anything about it, so we just continued without a care. Going about our daily lives, narrowly avoiding car crashes as we went.
If you asked any one of those students, they knew not to go on their phone while driving, but that didn't stop it from happening. “Oh it's just one text” and “I’m just changing a song” bounced around in our brains for so long that it completely transformed into scrolling through instagram and watching tv shows while driving. We knew that it was dangerous, but we never thought about how dangerous it really was. Add peer pressure to distracted, inexperienced drivers, and you've made a nightmare concoction with life-threatening consequences
I was never a dangerous driver, in fact, most of my friends made fun of me for being a grandma behind the wheel, so I never thought much about other teens driving. This was until one night my junior year of high school where my perspective totally switched. I was out with my friends on a Friday night. After a long week of schoolwork, we were looking to do something fun. Nothing crazy, just something besides our usual watch a movie and play cards. So we went out on a journey to go grab some late-night pancakes. It was a nice night out, so we decided to walk the half mile or so to the diner. On our walk there, we saw a car with four teenagers in it, laughing, smiling, singing along to their favorite songs. It was a scene right out of a coming of age movie. You know how it is at that age, you feel as though you are on top of the world and nothing can touch you. That is, until you fall from the sky and hit the ground hard. This car was going fast, so fast, and swerving side to side as it barreled towards us. We had a split second to jump off of the sidewalk and onto the furthest patch of grass as we could. The car barely missed us, but they didn't even stop, they just continued to drive up the road in the same haphazard way they came.
My mind began to race, what if we weren't paying attention, what if instead of walking we drove and there was no grass for us to jump on to dodge the car? We were so close to permanent injury, or even death, by our reckless peers who didn't even notice that they drove over a curb and onto a sidewalk and into an innocent person's lawn. I don't know what happened to them after. I hope they made it home safe, but what about the next time? And the time after that? Will they, and the others surrounding them be just as lucky as they were this time? Due to that incident followed by many more car accidents by my peers, I realized something had to change. Teens needed to be aware of the damage they could cause with their driving and do something about it.
The first step to fix this issue before it's too late is for teens to take accountability for what they do behind the wheel. No more technology within arms reach and more following of the rules for permit/underaged-licenses need to go in effect immediately. Unfortunately, most teens will not do this themselves. To aid in awareness and boost accountability, schools should start sharing real-life stories and bringing in professional speakers to talk about the danger of driving inexperienced. It might take a long time for anything to get through to teenagers in these situations, but eventually, little by little, something will change. In conclusion, teen driver safety isn't just about learning how to operate a vehicle, it's about building responsibility and protecting lives. Thank you so much for taking the time to review my application.