Cars, trucks, and SUVs have become engrained in our livelihood in so many areas of America. It is nearly impossible to function without reliable, individualized transportation to get you back and forth to work, your children to soccer practice, and your mother to her doctor's appointments three days a week. I am one of these people, with four kids from toddler age to a college student while working three jobs and balancing school. Driving is virtually no longer an option in American society.
Some people are uniquely positioned to understand the importance of keeping those around you safe while maneuvering a 4,000-pound weapon. I am poised to see the importance from both sides as one of those jobs is as an Emergency Department RN. I have worked in the ED since 2011 and have seen many levels of what unsafe driving can do- and I am not even at the level 1 trauma center! I have seen road rash from both motorcycles and those who have climbed out of their sunroofs across gravel; I have seen arterial bleeding from people’s extremities and internal bleeding from the base of a steering wheel.
As with other areas of medicine, primary care (preventative care) is significantly cheaper and more effective in longevity and outcomes than tertiary care (reactive care). Driver’s training is the “preventative care” of driving. The more time, effort, and practice that gets put into driving before one is on one's own on the road, the more you could infer improved outcomes of one’s driving. The most important practices in driver’s education include seatbelt wearing, continuous reinforcement of good practice with immediate feedback on poor performance, discussion of anticipating other’s actions on the road, and hours behind the wheel in a monitored environment, which don’t allow for distractions while driving. These positive aspects of driver’s education reduce the number of driving-related deaths.
Education in driving teaches, forces practice of, and reinforces positive habits related to driving. The repetition of getting in the vehicle, placing your seatbelt in place, and turning on the car instills one of the most important practices- wearing your seatbelt- and turns it into a habit. Creating a habit of “the basics” in driving can be the difference between life and death in driving: an accident in which the injured party was not wearing a seatbelt has a very low threshold to be called trauma upon arrival to the emergency department. Alternatively, a patient with a seatbelt on needs a significant mechanism, such as a rollover of the vehicle or another person’s death within the vehicle, to be considered a trauma patient.
Aspects of driver’s education that can be so important are that monitored time in a vehicle with a trained person allows them to reinforce habits and open continuous communication about decision-making in real time and anticipating the actions of other drivers. These are not replaceable by other training or discussion. People learn best with direct, in-the-moment feedback that can be provided by a 1:1 driving instructor, reinforcing information given during courses. This time is also essential because one cannot drive distracted while driving with an instructor. One cannot pull out their phone or attend to their other passengers in the vehicle with an instructor sitting by. This gives additional quality to the driving time while practicing.
While I have escaped serious accidents, it was likely by luck. My estranged husband used driving as a form of abuse: tailgating the cars in front of us, speeding, lane changes erratically, and frequently lying about driving while intoxicated. These pieces are not something that can be changed why driver’s education (only by years of therapy, if that), but are important to consider as another potential driver on the road. Anticipating other driver’s actions come with open dialogue, practice and exposure to driving, all of which can be obtained during a good driver’s education course.
The best thing I can do as a driver to keep myself and my children safe is to use appropriately sized restraints on all of us religiously. One of the best ways to keep myself and other drivers safe is to minimize distractions by placing devices on “Do Not Disturb” and setting up my music before driving. I can also do my best to give myself enough time so that I am not rushing through decision-making or taking risks while driving to attempt to reduce time on the roads. These suggestions I do for myself will apply to anyone trying to make the roads safer after our diver’s education experiences.