Drivers Safety

Miller, Alex 11/20/2019

Driver Education Initiative Essay Contest

In the summer between my Sophomore and Junior year of highschool, I took a drivers education course through my highschool on the weekdays. Throughout the course, I learned how to safely, and properly drive and maintain a vehicle. Over the course of the summer, the main focus on every topic we discussed was safety. When I first started driving as a young adult, I ignored the fundamental rules of driving, like most kids, and made mistakes that cost too many lives across the United States yearly. I texted while driving, I drove faster than the posted limit, and I focused on music and the radio instead of the road. Unfortunately, these common mistakes caused me to have an accident and I risked not only my life, but my friends life in the process. As most kids our age, (Young Adults), we think nothing of texting and driving; or focusing on the radio while we are cruising along the road. One day after a football game, I picked up my friend and we were headed to meet with our other friends to hangout. He was changing the music through his phone and asked to turn up the bass. Rather than telling him how to do it so I could focus on the road, I began to mess with the radio as we began to arrive to a sharp bend. Luckily, my friend looked up and noticed the situation we were in. Panicking, as we were seconds away from going head first into the ditch, I shanked the wheel and we began to spin out. I tried to turn into it but as I had a lapse in judgement for the moment, I did not shift it into neutral. Instead I pressed on the break, making a large mistake. I was driving my Jeep Liberty, and given its short wheel base, we began to flip as the car went momentarily airborne. We then smashed into a tree and were sent in a 180 facing back into the ditch. The rear axle was in the backseat of my car and the vehicle was totaled. My friend and I managed to get away with only minor injuries, and light concussions. Everyone we knew, including him and I, always said it will be someone else who gets into an accident. What we were not able to realize until it happened to us was that to everyone else, we are that someone else that it happens to. Since that event, him and I along with our friends who weren’t there, realized that we only have one life and that we need to wait for the texts we get; or the song that comes on that we want to change can wait until it is safe for us to act upon. Because not only does it endanger the lives of us, it can risk the lives of others as well who are following the rules of the road.