Driver education is a critical component to preventing needless, tragic deaths and injuries every day. I work as a High Value Case Manager for the largest plaintiff law firm in the country handling ultra-catastropic and catastrophic motor vehicle cases. At least 20 percent of my cases are wrongful deaths from driver negligence. This year alone I helped win countless settlements for families. Across the country, thousands of lives are impacted needlessly every day from preventable car crashes.
Driver education nationwide is insufficient. There needs to be a progression of training over the first five years that a driver is licensed regardless of age. Driving is a skill that must be built over time by doing it. Drivers need to be exposed to different situations and learn the necessary foundational skills to manage them. Specifically focusing on areas of liability such as yielding the right of way properly, emergency situations, defensive driving, DUI training before someone has a DUI, and maintaining attention while driving are all critical components of training. Building basic skills up to a high level of defensive driving and awareness is critical. At a minimum, one year of ongoing training that is progressive is needed.
We train commercial drivers intensely through a federal mandate - why isn’t there a similar mandate for passenger vehicles which cause the vast majority of crashes every day? Less tragedies and negligence would occur every day if the training were more robust and thorough. Expecting someone to be able to successfully drive safely after a few hours in a class is unrealistic. Waiving the requirement for anyone over 25 is outright ludicrous, yet most states do. Every state needs to do more to train drivers every day on how to be safe and operate a vehicle properly, especially since many modern drivers operate a vehicle outside of their home state.
Currently drivers attend an online or in person class, practice some maneuvers on a course, take a simple test after reading a book, and have to pass a simple road test in an almost perfect environment. If they can pass a simple driving test, they can become licensed but that doesn’t even begin to cover all the complexity today’s driving entails. I see crashes every day where other people fail to yield properly or pay attention. Using GPS, understanding road situations, defensive driving, avoiding accidents, and maintaining proper speed and focus while driving are all critical skills that need to be taught to drivers. Technology is doing a lot to address this but not everyone has access to these safety features and won’t for at least another decade due to income disparities.
Teaching how to maintain a proper speed and manage emergency braking effectively would all lead to few crashes. I was personally injured ten years ago when an uninsured 20-year-old rear-ended my vehicle at approximately 75 miles per hour while I was stopped for traffic on I-35 in Dallas. That crash should have killed me. Instead it left me with lifelong, debilitating injuries I still deal with and will for the rest of my life. It also motivated me to become a personal injury paralegal to help others and I am now pursuing a law degree to become an attorney.
In the last ten years, I have helped thousands of car crash victims to recover and rebuild their lives as a result of someone else’s negligence. I have never been at fault for a crash, but I’ve been a victim three times, the most severe instance in 2015. I work every single day to educate the public and serve as a victim advocate in my role but I see countless instances in which drivers simply were not properly trained. Ongoing driver’s education that progressively addresses common situations around liability and negligence should be a requirement annually for the first five years someone has their license, regardless of their age. Many people immigrate here and have no idea how to drive in our country - some can’t even read English but can be licensed within months of arriving here. These drivers often begin working with Lyft and Uber which puts others at substantial risk of injury.
Additionally, with increasing congestion as well as roads and highways becoming larger and more complex, with faster speed limits, the types of life-altering ultra-castrophic crashes are increasing and changing lives daily. Drivers need to be required to undergo more substantial training to deal with the myriad situations that can arise every day while they are behind the wheel.