Safe driving and the knowledge about it is important, not just for yourself but for others around you. It’s a known statistic that more accidents happen around the ages of 18 and 25, and accidents happen more among males than females, which impacts your insurance. In this essay, I will share some personal experiences of what unsafe driving can lead to and its consequences.
The first step is to acknowledge that unsafe driving or no education about safe driving can lead to more deaths from car accidents as a result of it. For example, recently, my sister had wanted her license for months, and we tried to teach her how to drive, but we were busy with our own lives at the time. She had to learn most of her driving skills by herself, and when we could, we would also have lessons with her. She did get her license by the beginning of August, and in less than a month, she got into a major accident caused by her, that totaled her car and left her mental scars about driving.
Another example of unsafe driving was my car accident this year. I got into a rear-end accident in May of 2024, where I rear-ended another car by being distracted by my phone. At the time, I was working my second job, Ubering, while I was looking down at the app, I ran my car into the back of another. That whole experience left an impact on how I drive now; I realized I was too comfortable, not only driving in that area but my driving style as well. I did end up with a ticket, where I had to complete a driving safety course and relearn everything.
There were steps that could’ve been taken to prevent mine and my sister’s accidents. For my accident, there were steps that I had to do in order to have my driver’s record clean because I did get a ticket for that car wreck. I had to go to my local justice office to see what options I had for my ticket. The first was to pay $350 and it would go on my record, or pay $128 and get a driving safety course, which was about $35, and it would expunge that ticket off my driving record. I took the safety course because I didn’t want that on my driving record because it could affect me in the future, not just with jobs but how police officers will handle you.
The course is 90 days and or 6 hours of videos and quizzes. I realized that taking this course over the span of three months taught me old things I forgot and new things I wasn’t taught in my driving classes when getting my license. I learned for the first time that I wasn’t looking out for myself on the road but for others. I also realized that if I continued being this reckless on the road, it would affect my jobs because both jobs required me to be driving on the road for long periods of time.
I got away with minor injuries, and so did my sister. Looking at the pictures of what our cars looked like after the accident still sits with me months later. I realized after what happened I could’ve been seriously hurt or, worse, dead. I could’ve killed the older couple in the other car. At the time, my parents were not even in the state to know what happened; I had to call my brother to come get me because my car was totaled once I hit them. My sister, on the other hand, was hit even though she caused the accident. If the other car hit her on her side or if she had a passenger, they said neither would’ve made it because of the speed at which the other car was going. She was also not anywhere that her family was, she was at school an hour and a half away from my mom and two hours from me. She had a bystander help her by calling my mom and explaining what happened.
Our parents were not close to us during our accidents, which happens a lot, but the feeling of not having them there is haunting, especially in my sister’s case because they had to transfer her to a hospital because she was unconscious.
There are many steps that can be taken when being a safer driver; some I have implemented in my own driving. One personal one is letting someone know where you are headed just in case something happens. Another one is putting on DND, known as Do Not Disturb while driving, in newer cars, you can have it turned on through Apple CarPlay just to have that extra step of protecting and having less of a chance of being distracted on your phone. Lastly, having your awareness of your driving and others driving around you can help you in dire situations where you need to think fast and be fast so as to not cause an accident.