Nicholas Tichota


“In
the Driver’s Seat”

The first time I
got in an accident was when I was 8 years old. My dad was driving my
sister and I home after going shopping at the grocery store. As we
came to a stop at a red light we were rear-ended by a massive grey
truck. Our miniscule red Pontiac stood no chance against the hammer
of a truck that obliterated the back of our car. Luckily, nobody was
hurt, but we later discovered that the reason for the accident was
because the driver was distracted by something on the side of the
road, allowing for his attention to slip for seconds. That day I
began to notice the importance of driving without distractions.

Though our
situation turned out positive, in that there were no injuries, the
situation of many others isn’t nearly the same. About 34,000 people
in the United States die every year in car related accidents. What’s
worse is that these deaths are so easily preventable. Doing actions
such as eliminating distractions and attending drivers ed
can help to decrease the chance of being in a fatal car accident.

The first step to
help prevent car accidents is to eliminate distractions. Distractions
are anything that takes one’s attention off the road for any
duration of time, and range from texting or calling to even
daydreaming. Though one’s attention is only off driving for
seconds, the result can be death. According to nhtsa.gov, looking at
one’s phone for five seconds at 55mph is the same as blindly
driving a football field’s amount of distance. This can easily be
solved by locking one’s phone away, be it in a bag or even just
throwing it in the back seat.
The second step in
preventing car accidents is by attending drivers ed.
According to Drivingtests.org, “Teens ages 15-20 without driver’s
education are responsible for 91% of teen driver crashes.” Driver’s
education not only teaches people how to use a car, but also rules of
the road and how they relate to greater driver safety. Attending
drivers ed allows for new drivers to be more familiar with
driving etiquette, allowing for better decision making in high stress
situations like bad traffic or after an accident.
Altogether, I
believe road safety is very easy to practice. Having taken driver’s
education courses has allowed for me to be far more responsible and
safer on the road. I believe that if everybody took driver’s
education classes, paired with striving to eliminate all possible
distractions, that the rate of deaths due to car accidents would
decrease to almost nothing.