For many people, including myself, driving is a type of freedom. It represents independence and the ability to go wherever someone wishes whenever they choose to. For new and young drivers, often those with little behind-the-wheel experience, it can make them feel invincible and a new type of “alive.” However, this freedom is not free of significant responsibility. Too often, people who have yearned to experience this freedom forget the innate dangers of driving, which remains one of the leading causes of preventable deaths around the globe. Driver education ensures that these dangers are minimized by supplying people with the knowledge, skills, and awareness necessary to stay safe while on the road. It reminds drivers that with any freedom comes its shared responsibility, and every single decision made behind the wheel can potentially affect not only the driver but also passengers, pedestrians, and other people who share the roads.
I’ve had personal experiences that have highlighted just how crucial it is to take driving seriously and the devastating consequences not doing so can have. When I was just four years old, I was involved in a car accident due to bad road conditions and the improper driver reaction. By some miracle, everyone in the car survived, but we weren’t free of permanent injuries. My mother lost a large portion of her forearm and had to have titanium surgically placed into her spine. I can still remember the feeling of the car rolling off the side of the freeway into a ditch and not knowing if any of us were going to survive. That is a feeling no one, let alone a young kid, should ever have to experience. Then this past year, someone I knew personally—a classmate and a teammate—passed away from a car accident due to reckless driving. It’s hard to lose someone my age—someone so young and with so much life left to live—pass away in a way that was completely preventable. If the driver had been taking everything seriously and being even just a little more responsible, she would still be here today. Both of these experiences have truly emphasized the importance of responsible driving and how proper driver education would have changed the outcomes of both tragic events.
Driver education is the key to preventing and minimizing driving-related injuries and fatalities. It provides drivers with important knowledge, skills, and experiences that will help them be safe on the road. While most people misconceive driver education as simply learning how to operate a vehicle, it is much more than that; it is learning and understanding potential consequences of irresponsible behind-the-wheel behavior and knowing how to avoid getting into dangerous situations. By going through drivers education, it keeps the roads and people safer.
Defensive driving is a major lesson that is taught in driver education courses. It allows drivers to be able to anticipate potential dangers ahead of time and take the steps to avoid them. I know this has helped me massively while driving. I live right off of a constantly busy highway, and when the speed is 75 mph, slowing down and having to turn can be the cause of accidents if people in the cars behind are not paying attention or taking precautions. Defensive driving has taught me to think miles ahead of my turn and allow the cars behind me to not be in a position that can cause an accident. Learning how to recognize hazards, such as irresponsible drivers and unsafe road conditions, can play a large role in staying safe. If the driver of the accident I was in as a kid was more aware of the road conditions and how to take precautions, my family’s life would be very different.
Driver's education also emphasizes how distractions can have an effect on safety. Drivers focusing their attention on things such as the radio, phones, and passengers instead of the road is the cause of many accidents and is easily preventable. It’s important to remember that accidents can happen in a split second, and the time that it takes to turn the channel on the radio or look at a text can be the split second that something disastrous happens. Which is why being able to make split-second decisions is another important lesson taught in driver education courses. While it may be overlooked, accountability is also fostered within driver education. It teaches drivers that every action has its consequences and that they are responsible for keeping themselves safe as well as others around them.
With more drivers undergoing the proper driver education, the roads will be increasingly safer, with fewer accidents, injuries, and deaths. From experience, I know how important being responsible behind the wheel is and how injuries and deaths could’ve been easily prevented. Which is why people need to understand that driving is a privilege, not a right, and should be treated as such.