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As I reflect on the question of how to reduce road deaths related to driving, I recognize that it starts with driver training programs and the skills that new drivers develop before taking to the road. There are essential values that must be taught to new drivers including honesty, integrity, ethics, and accountability. As I continue to ponder how each of these vital characteristics can be consolidated into an idea that can be easily taught within new driver training, I recognize that there is one skill that encompasses all these necessary traits: professionalism. While there are, arguably, many skills that could benefit driver’s education students as they transition from the students of today into the drivers of tomorrow, professionalism is the singular skill that will be most critical in their development into the type of driver that will take to the roads safely and responsibly, preventing accidents and reducing the number of road deaths.
Professionalism, at first thought, can be interpreted in many ways. Some say that professionalism is a label that describes the act of working in a professional environment or gaining technical skills in a particular field. While that may be an acceptable definition for being a professional, professionalism is so much more. As Dale Atkins, an internationally recognized mountaineer and avalanche rescue expert, so wisely articulates in his Ted talk “Being A Professional: Dale Atkins at TEDxYouth@EHS”, professionalism is “not just a label or title. It also can be used to describe…attitudes, behaviors, and actions.” He further asserts that “attitudes drive behaviors … behaviors drive actions … then actions reinforce attitudes”. I believe what he is saying is that the quality of the attitudes we develop will then drive the quality and content of our behaviors and actions. Based on this understanding, I contend that professionalism is developing an attitude of honesty and integrity that drives ethical behavior and sets in motion a personal conviction for taking accountability for one’s actions. Understanding that the attitudes and behaviors students develop around driving will ultimately impact the actions they take on the road is fundamental for new drivers to understand. We must teach professionalism to new driving students to prevent future road deaths.
Cultivating an attitude of honesty and integrity will set this new generation of drivers apart from the crowd in an increasingly self-centered world of drivers where anything that benefits self-interest is largely deemed acceptable, no matter how illegal, dangerous, or harmful to others. Learning to act with the moral traits of honesty and integrity is a special piece of professionalism that our driver’s education programs cannot afford to overlook. Robert Krulwich alleges in the podcast Radiolab that “having a moral sense is a unique and special human quality”. Teaching driver’s education students how to harness and utilize the power of their moral compass will endow them with the ability to not only excel as students, and honorable individuals, but to take to the roads with the courage and confidence that will allow them to make good driving decisions that prevent deaths, even if it seems no one else on the road is.
As driver’s education students build attitudes of honesty and integrity, they will become people who behave ethically and acquire the sensitivity to understand the importance of ethical behavior in the decisions they make on the road. “Making good ethical decisions requires a trained sensitivity to ethical issues and a practiced method for exploring the ethical aspects of a decision” according to the authors of “A Framework for Ethical Decision Making”. Helping new driving students understand that ethics is more than their feelings, the laws and rules they follow, or culturally identified norms, will enable them to become the kind of critical thinkers that are able to develop the strategies they need to make ethical and safe decisions in any event they encounter on the road. Teaching new students how to evaluate the world with ethical lenses such as care, virtue, or common good will develop a stronger ability within new drivers to think critically, feel confident in driving decisions, and empathize with the people that could be impacted or killed by poor driving decisions.
Teaching students to think with honesty and integrity and behave ethically will empower driving schools to send out graduates who are able to take accountability for the decisions they make both on the road and before they get behind the wheel—the core of professionalism. This principle of professional accountability is highlighted by the ethical dilemmas that programmers are currently trying to tackle with the rise in self-driving cars. “Consider a car headed toward pedestrians, including a family with a stroller. Does the AI swerve into oncoming traffic, risking the lives of its occupants, or continue forward, endangering the pedestrians? These are real-time, split-second decisions automated systems will need to make”. These split-second ethical decisions are not only faced by AI, but they are also faced by every driver on the road and drivers must be prepared to take accountability for how they handle these decisions. My own family has been impacted by this type of life-or-death decision making on the road. When a driver fell asleep behind the wheel and crossed a double yellow line directly into the path of our oncoming car on a two-lane road, my husband had seconds to determine what action to take to protect the lives of our family and others around us. The trajectory of the approaching car made an accident inevitable, but his action of skillfully turning out of the way just enough to lessen the impact on the driver’s side without fully entering oncoming traffic and impacting even more drivers created just enough of a pocket of protection to save the life or injury of our three-month-old daughter while preventing further harm or injury to others. At one point or another, every driver will undoubtedly be faced with difficult choices that have potentially life-threatening consequences such as these. Learning the skills to navigate ethical decisions with confidence and consideration will help develop driving students who recognize that they may be placed in situations on the road where there is no clear-cut answer and prepare them to take accountability for the decisions they make and discourage them from making decisions that lead to further road deaths.
The elements that embody professionalism are core principles that will be the singular, most important, skill we can develop within new drivers to reduce future driving deaths. Developing honest, and ethical drivers who have the integrity to act with accountability for their actions is at the heart of why we have professional institutions to train new drivers. We cannot ignore the need to include within training programs the only skill that incorporates each of these traits—professionalism.