Imagine a five year old, seated on her aunt's lap in the back seat of her mum’s car. Her mum is speeding. The little girl sees a van also speeding. It’s heading in her direction.

Imagine that little girl, now older, walking down the hot streets of Nigeria, alongside her aunt. Her aunt crosses and as she is crossing, a motorcycle hits her. She wakes up in a clinic.

Twice I had near death experiences due to reckless driving.

Just as you cannot be a lawyer without understanding the law, you cannot be a driver without the knowledge of driving. I learnt from my science teacher in secondary school, the difference between cramming and actual comprehension.

How much of what you were taught years ago in school do you remember? I’m assuming that like me, your answer is not very much at all.

Why?

We weren’t assimilating, but rather ‘learning’ for the sake of passing. We didn’t study to have true understanding, but simply to have a report card that we weren’t embarrassed to show our parents.

This very mentality is adopted by many individuals when taking drivers ed. Many ‘learn’ the rules to pass their exam, but have little awareness of the responsibility that rests on them.

Now recollect your days in secondary school, college or university. There’s surely a formula, law or principle that you still remember till this day.

Speaking for myself, I remember that Pythagoras’ theorem states that in a right angle triangle, the square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the square of the other two sides of the triangle. I learnt it at a young age, but it didn’t stop there; I continued to apply it.

That is step 1, we must continually apply and refresh our minds on what we’ve learnt.


Additionally, I remember the tragic event on 9/11 not because I was there. I learnt about it in my English lesson as we studied a book called Saturday. I remember the book and what it was about because of that tragic event the author based it on.

Every human has an emotive side, whether masked or unmasked. If we can combine understanding with emotion, how triumphant would the result be?

A wise man once said, "not all knowledge is acquired by learning from our own faults; at times it is wiser to learn from the mistakes of others.” A step that can be taken to reduce the number of deaths related to driving, is giving test takers the opportunity to learn from the mistakes of other drivers and the consequences of them.

This can be done by enlisting those who have made grievous blunders to document and share their experiences with potential test takers, via video or other virtual platforms.

Overall, the solution starts with someone willing to take responsibility, not playing the ‘blame game’.

Let us remember that every life has a purpose and every action we take could make or break the future of that life.