I have been driving since I was 10. My family has owned four-wheelers, Side-By-Side, Mini Bikes and much more. I have learned how to drive vehicles before my license which has helped me be a safer driver overall. Now that I am almost 18, I have been driving for around two and a half years. I own horses and I rodeo so I travel a lot around the U.S. and Washington, with this I drive a horse trailer and a truck as well as drive a Chevy Sonic to school every day which is a stick shift. When I started driving I started with an HHR and I was not a huge fan of it. It was black with blue flames at the front and little gold horses, but the only thing I did like about it was that it had heated seats. Since I'm about to go to college I ended up getting a new car that has better gas mileage. We were looking at a smaller cars that had good gas mileage and would be easier to drive around but ended up looking at a lot of stick shifts and I did not want to do that. Now that I've learned how to drive a stick I love it. I prefer it over an automatic car now and in the long run it has made me become a better driver overall.
I think that the importance of new and incoming drivers being educated on how to drive is very important. Some of it can only be attained through experience in scary situations but most of it should be in your Driver's Ed Course. The state needs to make sure that we have driver's ed people who are educating the incoming drivers to make the roads more safe. Parents are also part of this making limits on how far and long kids can drive and how late they're out doing it. This all makes it safer for us but the ones that are making it safe are us as kids being the new incoming drivers. When you first get your license you're super excited to go out and drive everywhere but we don't know what can happen on the road yet, we're new to driving. So for us, we have to take responsibility and make sure that we're safe on the road because if we're not we don't know if other people will be. So to ensure that the road will be safer we have to be the ones that are safe first.
I think one step that would help make the road safer is teaching your kids to drive before they're on the road. Whether it's dirt bikes, regular bikes or 4 weelers, if they have that knowledge before they go out into the world and go around people who might not be driving safely it can make it a lot less stressful for them to go in the driver's ed and be a responsible driver. I think that we should have an age limit on how old you can be to drive, this is because at some point in your life you won't be able to move as fast as let's say a 30-year-old, this is an issue. After all, people are not as reactive to what's going on around them and it would be safer if we had reliable people driving.
I have had lots of experience with friends or people I'm acquainted with being an accident. When I first started driving with my parents I was out of Dutch Bros downtown Spokane and there was a drive-by shooting, this was across the road from us but it was still very scary. I've also had a camping trailer fly by me at around 70 mph and one of their weels caught in the gravel on the side of the road and ended up tipping their RV over. I've had several of my friends drink while they had been driving, I did not know they were drinking at the time but this is dangerous for them as well as other people on the road. My school is in the middle of fields for a very rural community in Spangle and the roads can get quite icy. Last year one of the boys that went to my school was driving through Spangle when their car slid across the road and went into a head-on collision with the semi-truck. Everyone heard that he was okay but no one had seen him since the crash. Someone I was very close with was road Harley and his back wheel caught in a pothole and threw him off the side of the road luckily he was not badly injured but it's still very scary seeing how easy it is to crash and to see your friends and family being in those situations can be hard.
I can be a safer driver by making sure I am awake and alert while driving and making sure my car, truck and trailer are all in functioning order. If I'm going on long trips it would be safer to go with two people as if I get too tired I can have a second person drive. I currently have a friend who has been getting into some trouble and it's been dangerous with driving. I can't tell her what to do or make her do it, but I can try to lead her in the right direction. So if anyone I know friends or family are not being safe with their driving, all I can do is try to educate them on what they should be doing on the road. The only thing that we can do for ourselves to make it safer is to make sure that we are educated and making the right decisions while driving.