Driver's Ed Teaches Courage

Kessler 2

Zelie Kessler

DmvEdu.org

29 November 2019

Driver’s Ed Teaches Courage

Plato once said, “Courage is knowing what not to fear.” Most people have varying perspectives on driving, such as loving it or disliking it immensely. The issue with both is that neither have courage--they do not know what parts of driving they should fear and what parts they should not. The action of driving someone else should scare anyone because their life is in your hands, but because of Driver’s Ed, learning and practicing defensive driving, all new drivers should have the courage that Plato describes. The problem with our society is that many people do not have this courage, but I genuinely think that Drivers Ed, practice, and good examples are an easy way to teach new drivers the vitality of courage.

Driving is a huge responsibility, and to get new drivers to realize that, Drivers Ed is necessary. It has the ability to present current statistics concerning crashes as well as the reasons behind them, which I find to be the most important. Many deaths are due to drunk driving, but what many students’ do not realize that the deaths accounted for are generally the people hit by the drunk driver. This is presented in Drivers Ed, which causes students to realize that they need to be very focused while driving, but then they are also given defensive driving techniques to practice, such as SIPDE, to build their confidence and courage. I can say with confidence that these lessons were what gave me the courage to be a good driver.

I can also say, from experience, that the more technical lessons such as the relation of speed to deceleration time as well as road conditions to driving techniques are vital to keeping our roads

safe as well as reducing the number of driving deaths. One day when my friend was driving me, we got into a crash. The car two ahead of us hydroplaned and spun out, which caused the pickup truck in front of us to make a dead stop on the highway. This all happened so fast that my friend could not stop in time and her car rear-ended the pickup truck.

Driver’s Ed saved our lives that day. It was clear that the driver ahead of us did not handle her car well. In a perfect world, she would have applied what she learned in Drivers Ed to this moment--drive slow in the rain, and if you hydroplane, continue driving straight and do not break--but she did not. Luckily, my friend Lauren did. She did her best to slow down, but when she could not do so in time, she made the smart decision to not swerve into the other lane and risk a ten car pile-up--she saved our lives. In the end, Drivers Ed is important in order to keep the person in the driver’s seat aware and prepared for any obstacle that could hit them--it gives them the courage that Plato described.