I am writing this essay on the importance of driver education and safety in order to win scholarship money for my continued education in college. My name is Thomas Sykes and I am a 16 year old Junior in high school located in Chattanooga, Tennessee. I am also a NEW driver. I live with my mother in a single parent household and me becoming a driver, as soon as possible, was a huge relief of stress, time management and my mother’s work schedule. But before she would allow me to get on the road by myself, she signed me up for a local driving school so that I could understand the “ins and outs” of driving safety, hazards on the road, weather issues, etc. Initially I didn’t want to go. Who really wants to sit in a classroom with strangers listening to someone talk about driving for 8 hours? But my mom and I work as a team and this is what I had to do in order to be able to become more independent. I did learn a lot from the class and I use the information daily when I am driving to school and to my extracurricular activities.
Unfortunately, last year I had a school mate who was killed in a car accident while she was driving o to campus. This was a huge “gut punch” for all of my classmates. We even had to take a day off from school the following day after it happened. This accident put emphasis on driving safety and paying attention at all times when we are driving on the road. Sometimes it’s not YOU that is driving unsafely but you have to watch the other drivers too. My mother always tells me that “you know what you are going to do on the road but you don’t know what the other person is thinking”. Taking the driving course can help reduce the number of deaths on the road by the fact that the most common reasons for accidents are talked about and those things can stay in the front of your mind when driving.
The steps that can be taken to reduce the number of deaths while driving are important to ALWAYS do. Mainly to avoid distractions like texting, talking on the phone, listening to loud music. Another step to reduce deaths would be not drinking alcohol and driving. Of course, alcohol or any other illicit substance can impair your thoughts and could have you cause an accident that could result in death. Also taking your hands off of the steering wheel to pick up something from the floor or backseat can be very dangerous. Our hands and eyes must stay on the steering wheel and road at all times.
By me taking the driving class, this also allowed my mom to get a discount on our car insurance. It is always a plus when we can save money. And I also signed up for an online driving course through State Farm so that we could get additional discounts. After taking the online course, I was sure that I understood driving safety because many of the things covered were the same as the driving course that I took in person. The insurance agent called me so that we could go over the information and I guess so that she could be sure that it was actually me that took the course. I would recommend it to my friends. It is easy, does not take too much time and saves your family money.
I think that I am a good driver but there is always room for improvement on a daily basis. My key takeaways are: to keep my eyes on the road, keep my music volume to a minimum (that’s a hard one lol), don’t text and drive, pull over for emergency vehicles, drive the speed limit, slow down in the rain or snow. I always try to take the same route to places that I go a lot that way I am familiar with my surroundings and hopefully there won’t be any surprises that could cause me to have an accident. My mom tells me every time that I leave the house to “BE CAREFUL” and to never rush if I’m running late because it is better to be late than in an accident and/or in the hospital. I try to keep these words in my mind when I leave the house each day.
I hope that this essay gives you a good idea of how important that I take safe driving and how it has impacted my life, my family’s life and everyone around me. And I hope that something that I have said will make you want to award me the scholarship for my college education.