Mostly everyone on this planet drives a car, many with lots of road knowledge and experience, and many with very little. People like those who don’t have much knowledge are the main ones who cause unnecessary, and most of the time lethal, car crashes. From my perspective, nobody wants to die in a car crash, or have their lives changed negatively and turned upside down. This essay will involve the purpose of driver’s education and safety, problems that arise from problems such as the one I mentioned, my own experience on the subject my past experiences, and what actions people can take to promote safer driving around young people.
Teen driver safety is such an important issue, one that everyone should figure out ways to improve. According to the National Traffic Highway Safety Administration, young drivers, ages 15 to 20 years old, are especially vulnerable to death and injury on our roadways – traffic crashes are the leading cause of death for teenagers in America. Teenagers, even though they drive less than most older adults, are the causes of most crashes in America. Many die because they don’t carry with them a mature mindset for the road, a mindset that could evade something like a crash, or worse, death. Driver’s education plays a big role in unraveling teens' minds so that they can be ready for the road they drive on. This type of education also helps them create new skills and teaches them the most important rules of the road to stay safe. Many teenagers assume that driver’s education is something they don’t need, that they will just learn from someone they may know or learn by themselves, but they don’t see the potential problems that can come out of those poor actions.
On the road, there are many distractions: things like construction, animals, cool-looking cars, small events taking place, and even using your phone. Distractions separate the driver’s focus away from the road, leading them to have a slow reaction time whenever they have to take quick action. Lack of experience can lead to teen drivers losing control when they start to feel pressured over issues where that person has to think quickly but don’t know what to do. The one thing teen drivers can do that I completely agree with is practice. Practicing helps to hone your skills with anything. An example of how someone can practice is having a very experienced person sitting in the passenger’s seat testing them as they drive while keeping control over the driver so no crashes occur. This was how I practiced driving at first with my dad next to me. Using this method of practice is the most efficient way for someone to learn road safety.
There was this one time I was in the passenger seat while my mom was driving to pick up my brothers from their elementary school. All of a sudden, a car that was turning left got hit so hard by this speeding car that it flipped so fast in the air and landed on the roof. It looked so crazy and unreal as if it came from a movie. Watching something like that scares me so much, and thinking about it makes me want to stay safe while on the road and take many precautions to stay safe. I didn’t even know if the person in the car survived because of the strength of those cars clashing. I’ve also seen various videos on Instagram recently of people crashing in such horrible ways that they either lose a limb or almost die and get rushed to the hospital because those people decided to break the rules of the road by speeding or not knowing who had the right to go first. From all of this, I feel like I should pay for driving classes so that nothing bad happens to me when I’m alone on the road.
From a personal perspective, schools and communities should start activities or group courses to teach young people the rules of the road, how to drive on various roads, and what to do if something bad and fast were to occur. Something my private high school did, which I do see other schools around my county do, is give free driving classes to students from grades 9 to 12. If we could all start teaching young teenagers the safety of driving and the rules and such from a very young age, they should be road-ready when the time comes when they will need to go on the road by themselves.