Youth Forward Scholarship 2019
Parents Teach Their Children What is Safe
Payton Bowling
Indianapolis, IN
Many
people learn what to consider ‘safe’
while
driving not from a Driver’s
Ed program, but mainly by watching how their parents drive.
It
only makes sense- kids are carted around everywhere, every day by
parents or other authority figures for many years. The things that
parents do teach their children what is ‘normal’
and
how to live their own lives. No matter how good a Driver’s
Ed program is, it only lasts a few months, and when it’s
over young drivers follow the deeply-ingrained role model that has
been provided for them their entire lives.
Campaigns
and programs that encourage parents to drive safely could go a long
way to make driving safer in the long term. There’s
nothing that motivates parents quite like ensuring the well-being of
their children. When parents know that the best way to raise a safe
driver is to not just tell them that texting and driving is wrong,
but to show them through their own driving, both the parents and the
generation to come will be more conscious on the road.
I
can see it happening in my own life. My own father listens to music
in the car and often picks up his phone while driving to choose the
next song. He doesn’t
see this as particularly dangerous, but when people drive distracted,
they always think that they’ve
got things under control. This is how crashes happen. When I’m
in the car with him, I usually volunteer to look it up for him.
I
don’t
listen to music while driving because I don’t
usually drive for more than 15 minutes at a time. But when I start
driving regularly, either to school or to work, I can see myself
falling prey to the same illusion that I’ve
got it under control- and most of the time, I won’t
have anyone in the passenger seat to do things for me or remind me to
be safe. I plan to take precautions, like organizing a playlist
before I get on the road and setting up voice commands so that I can
stop the music if necessary. If I make a conscious effort to avoid
being in a distracting situation in the first place, I’ll
be a more responsible driver, and I can be a role model to my younger
sisters so that they’ll
be safer too.
people learn what to consider ‘safe’
while
driving not from a Driver’s
Ed program, but mainly by watching how their parents drive.
It
only makes sense- kids are carted around everywhere, every day by
parents or other authority figures for many years. The things that
parents do teach their children what is ‘normal’
and
how to live their own lives. No matter how good a Driver’s
Ed program is, it only lasts a few months, and when it’s
over young drivers follow the deeply-ingrained role model that has
been provided for them their entire lives.
Campaigns
and programs that encourage parents to drive safely could go a long
way to make driving safer in the long term. There’s
nothing that motivates parents quite like ensuring the well-being of
their children. When parents know that the best way to raise a safe
driver is to not just tell them that texting and driving is wrong,
but to show them through their own driving, both the parents and the
generation to come will be more conscious on the road.
I
can see it happening in my own life. My own father listens to music
in the car and often picks up his phone while driving to choose the
next song. He doesn’t
see this as particularly dangerous, but when people drive distracted,
they always think that they’ve
got things under control. This is how crashes happen. When I’m
in the car with him, I usually volunteer to look it up for him.
I
don’t
listen to music while driving because I don’t
usually drive for more than 15 minutes at a time. But when I start
driving regularly, either to school or to work, I can see myself
falling prey to the same illusion that I’ve
got it under control- and most of the time, I won’t
have anyone in the passenger seat to do things for me or remind me to
be safe. I plan to take precautions, like organizing a playlist
before I get on the road and setting up voice commands so that I can
stop the music if necessary. If I make a conscious effort to avoid
being in a distracting situation in the first place, I’ll
be a more responsible driver, and I can be a role model to my younger
sisters so that they’ll
be safer too.
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