Every Decision Matters: The Role of Driver Education in Preventing Tragedies

The importance of reducing the number of deaths is because they were unnecessary deaths that happened due to negligence for multiple reasons, whether it be speed, temper, or vigilance. The reason why driver education is so important is because, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), those who have not taken driver's education are 75% more likely to receive a ticket, 24% more likely to be involved in a fatal crash, and 16% more likely to be involved in a crash. This differs from the statistics of people who took driver's education, where only 10% of drivers get ticketed or are involved in an accident within their first two years of driving. That is a huge difference, which proves that it is extremely important that people take driver's education.

No matter your age, whether you are a teenager or an adult, 90% of the time people are getting ticketed or involved in accidents based on their own personal error. If they are properly educated by a professional who can tell them the errors they are making and help them in ways that follow the law and encourage them to abide by it, then we could probably reduce the amount of accidents that happen.

The reason I say by a professional is because when you get older, you gain more experience. Parents and adults, when they get older, know when to push the boundaries of the law and when to pull back from them. Even my own parent was scared of teaching me how to drive because there are certain things that she does that are not exactly 100% abiding by the law. Not to the extent where it would hurt somebody, but because of her experience and knowledge, she is able to pick and choose when to do certain things. When you are starting out, you do not really have that knowledge. Being reckless at the very beginning or not knowing certain things because you were not taught them, especially because the person teaching you does not always follow those rules themselves, can negatively affect the learning and improvement of a new driver.

The steps that can be taken are to make sure that every person, when first getting their license, should be required to take driving courses. It is important to not just teach the significance of paying attention visually but also teach the importance of not having multiple distractions, like having loud music or having multiple friends in the car, especially when you are first starting out as a driver. Most definitely not being on your phone and having something that prevents you from multitasking more than you already are as a driver is important.

I have been in multiple accidents with my parents, some worse than others. The two most heartbreaking ones from people that I know are that recently there was a car accident that cost an eight-year-old child's life. The child's mother was a very close friend of my family. They were in their apartment community, and the boy was playing outside with other children. They were playing with a ball, and the ball went into the street. He went to go get it, and he got ran over by a car. His body was severely injured, and that affected not just his life but his mother's life and his sister's life because it happened on his older sister's college graduation. He was his mother's youngest child and closest child. You could hear the pain in her voice because she had lost her baby.

The driver said that they were going no more than 40 miles an hour, and as a driver and someone who is learning to drive, 40 is not a speed where you should be able to cause that level of damage. They said that they only hit him with the front part of their car and stopped once they realized they hit him, so that should not have happened. Forty miles an hour is enough to bump somebody or possibly push a child, but for that eight-year-old boy to look how he looked, there was more to that story. Even if he was not supposed to go into the street, as a driver you are supposed to be 100% vigilant for anything. In those communities, you should not be going 40 mph anyway when children are around; you are supposed to be going 25 mph.

Another story was told to me by a teacher about how her family was in a car accident on Halloween, and it was caused by teen drivers who were driving the car under the influence. The teen driver survived, but not everyone in her family who was in the car did. Even the people who survived were severely affected. The crash caused my teacher's family's car to catch on fire, and there were children in that car who now have burn marks across their entire bodies. There is one person who I met who is such a kind person, but he does not have fingers and his entire body is severely burned, all because a group of teenagers were careless.

The precautions I would take are to make sure not to drink and drive. I personally would not drive anyone under the influence of any substance because then my focus would be not just on the road and my surroundings but also on keeping that other person safe and okay, and that is too many things to account for at the same time. I would not even feel comfortable driving at night because night is when there can be a lot more dangerous situations and accidents because it is so dark and it can be harder to see everything properly. It will take a while for me to feel comfortable playing music in my car because I would be scared of becoming too engrossed in the music to where I am not paying attention. Another precaution I would take is that, until maybe a year and a half after I start driving, I would not feel comfortable driving others around my age group.