Driver safety is one of the most overlooked and important issues causing injuries and death in the world today. There should be much more focus on the prevention of accidents and better responses for car crashes. For example, when a car accident happens, it should be more than just police that respond to the crash. More often than not, unless it is a very serious crash, only police respond to car accidents. I believe that there should be some sort of first responders that only respond to car accidents. This would be beneficial to police as well so they can respond to other crimes that are happening. It would also allow for people who are solely trained to respond to accidents so that they can be handled better and resolve any conflict that might occur in a crash. In terms of ensuring all of the drivers on the road are capable, I believe that every 5 or so years everyone should have to retake their driver’s test to make sure that they are capable of driving a car. I think that having this in place would help everyone be safer on the road. I also think that making texting and driving illegal would be very beneficial to drivers, but the issue with doing that is the inability to enforce it. Texting and driving is one of the leading causes of car crashes and if people start being sensible and more cautious about it then the number of deaths would be reduced. The issue with this again is getting people to listen and stop being on their phone while driving. Many people do not think it is a big deal but that is the exact opposite of what it is. According to The Zebra, about 9% of car crashes each year are caused by people texting and driving. This accounts for about 1,800 crashes each day and about 657,000 crashes each year in the United States of America alone. When I was about 10 years old, my grandfather and I were on our way home from a baseball game when suddenly a woman on her phone rear ended us. She tried to hide the fact that she was on her phone but she totaled the car that my grandfather was driving. It was a very old car so all she had to do according to the police was cover the cost to fix the car or pay the amount that the car cost. The issue is that since the car was so old that the cost to fix the car was more expensive than the car itself. The lady decided to pay the price of the car since it was cheaper but since my grandparents did not have enough money to fix the car they had to get rid of it which I think was completely unfair. This lady was driving completely unsafely and I think that if she had to have taken another driver’s test within less than five years of the incident she may have been safer and not crashed into us. Luckily no one was hurt but it was still very dangerous. I am sure there are many situations that are similar to this that occur everyday. Making sure we have people to handle the situation and creating safer drivers by testing them more often would be beneficial to everyone on the road.
Another big contributing factor to the number of car crashes and unsafe driving is the weather. Being safe on wet and icy roads is very important. According to the United States Department of Transportation, about 17% of all crashes are caused by winter time weather. I think that the requirement for the number of hours you practice driving in bad weather conditions should increase when you get your license and I think that it should specify a certain number of hours for driving in the winter or icy roads. I think that with more people better inclined and adapted to the inclement weather, people will be safer on the roads and know how to handle the road. I also believe that changing the speed limit depending on weather could make the roads safer. This way people are forced to go slower on the roads because many people will still go the speed limit in unideal weather when it is not safe. Driver’s education should be taken more seriously and I think with these suggestions in place that the number of car accidents will decrease significantly. Hopefully people start to realize how to be safer while driving so they do not put others in danger.