Educating the Young and the Old...er

Educating the Young and the Old….er

Just getting my license to drive, I find the scariest things is being in a major car accident. Car accidents vary but the results either end up in injuries or damage, but the most important concern is death. You just never know what could happen. That’s why there should be more of a need to create awareness for safe driving and following the rules of the road. The main and most important reason for this is because it could save lives.

It is important for drivers to know the education about driving so there are fewer and fewer accidents every year. According to injuryfacts.nsc.org, in 2017 there were approximately 40,231 car accidental deaths in the United States alone. From the years 1940 to 2017, the highest death rate in age categories was 25 to 44 followed by 15 to 24year olds. It surprises me that the largest death toll doesn’t come from the youngest age group, it comes from the 25-44-year-olds. It makes me wonder if there should be a refresher course every few years or so. Sixteen-year-olds get their drivers education classes at 16 (at least in New Jersey). If a written retest was given every ten years, maybe the number of deaths would decrease. There are so many cases of people not knowing the rules of the road and stupid things happening like running a red light or not seeing a stop sign. These simple things can be changed so easily and could make a significant change to the number of deaths that occur.

The easiest thing that people can do to make driving much safer is to just pay more attention to the road. These days, there are so many distractions, the biggest distraction is the cell phone. There are ways to help prevent accidents from occurring that people aren’t taking advantage of. For example, Apple has a mode that you can turn on, if you get a text, you won’t get a notification at all to distract you from driving, the sender gets a message indicating you are driving and they will receive it once they get to their destination. Another distraction is drinking. Even though people know the horrific events that could happen from drinking, some still take the risk of drinking and driving. It’s such an idiotic decision that a person could make, and there are people that do it every day. Just by having one person be a designated driver can save so many lives and I don’t know why some people don’t use them. Eating food while driving is another distraction that can easily be fixed, french fries are the worst, you drop one, reach down to pick it up and your eyes come off the road. Speeding can be controlled by adjusting the safety on some cars. There are many steps to reduce the number of deaths while driving, but people need to be smarter!

One of my close friends has gotten in an accident, and it wasn’t even from another driver. It was from a pothole in the road. Her brother was driving home from the store, and they were on a bumpy road. Once all the bumps and holes cleared up, he started to accelerate. Since it was dark, he didn’t see this huge pothole that was on the right side of the car. My friend was in the backseat of the car on the right side, and when her brother hit the pothole, he lost control. The car went spinning and the back right side of the car where my friend was sitting, slammed into a tree. My friend’s head smashed into the window. Luckily, she only suffered a concussion and nothing more serious than that. That story goes to show how easily people get into accidents and why something should be done to make the roads safer for people to drive on them.

I feel like the only way to help prevent these things from happening on the road is to just spread awareness. We’ve lowered the number of deaths over the years, but there is still a long way until the number drops significantly. There are pledges around that people could take to swear against doing the wrong thing while driving. If more people took these pledges seriously and they were advertised more, I think people would be made more aware and be more invested in doing the right thing.

There are many steps that we can take and pledges that we could sign, Apps we put on our phones, but the biggest thing, in my opinion, that will help reduce the death toll on the roads is awareness and safety. Speed limits should be obeyed and maybe re-testing adults every ten years would remind them of different road rules they had forgotten.