Driving is a dangerous necessity in modern society. People have to drive everyday in order to go anywhere or do anything, but the act of driving is likely to get the driver, and any passengers with them, killed as tens of thousands of people die from car accidents every year. That isn’t including all the people injured, or the property damage. Driving is objectively dangerous, but it doesn't have to be, and even if nothing about driving itself changes, there are ways to reduce deaths from car accidents.
The most dangerous parts of driving are the other drivers, the roads, and the environment. Other drivers will neglect to put on their turn signal before turning, go down residential streets at eighty miles per hour, and will try and gun it to make a yellow light long after it turns red. The rules of the road simply aren’t respected very well, as enforcement of said laws is often lighter than it should be. The roads themselves, along with the design around them, can also be a hazard. Many roads are built with turns too narrow for the speed limit. Many roads don’t have enough crosswalks, and speed limits similar to the freeway. This encourages people to risk crossing if they don’t walk to try their luck at a crosswalk over a mile away. The reason they would be trying their luck is because crosswalks often break. Maintenance is another big problem, especially with the roads themselves. If a road is not maintained, it will become hazardous to drive on, especially on freeways where a pothole taken at freeway speeds can send someone flying off a guardrail. Roads need to be well designed for both drivers and pedestrians, and they need to be maintained. There is also the environment itself that can be hazardous for drivers. For instance, my father and I were driving tonight and the rain was so heavy that the car’s windshield wipers going at full power couldn’t help us see anything. All we could see were blurs of color that were once the paint on the road, and the lights from the other cars. If my father was any less of a skilled driver, there is a chance he might’ve crashed the car. Even when there is no rain, the driver can still have problems in the form of the sun. At sunrise and sunset, the glare from the sun reflects off the road at just the right angle to hit drivers in their eyes. The sun glare during these periods of time is so intense that seeing the road similarly becomes impossible. There isn’t much that can be done about the rain except to try not to drive in it. The sun glare can be helped with sunglasses. Other environmental factors are usually more similar to the rain in that if you have to drive during such conditions, there isn’t much a person can do to make the experience better or safer for themselves. There are a multitude of things that make driving more dangerous for everyone involved with the road.
There aren’t ways to fully erase these points, but they can be minimized if society truly wants to minimize driver deaths and car accidents overall. For starters, driver education can immensely help with both understanding and respecting driving laws, and dealing with unsafe environmental conditions. If drivers were taught how dangerous certain maneuvers were, and were taught the muscle memory of things like turn signals and gauging yellow lights, problems like improper signaling and red light running would happen less frequently. Drivers should also be taught what to do in certain weather conditions like sunrise and sundown, heavy rain, fog, and snow so they don’t end up crashing their car. Part of this practice has to be on the individual, making sure that you remember to follow the rules of the road and brushing up on how to drive depending on the weather. Another thing that would help immensely with reducing car accidents is good road design and road maintenance. Roads have to be designed with driver’s needs, pedestrian needs, and anyone else's needs in mind (like animals crossing, or bicyclists). Roads should also be designed to handle the environmental conditions they are most likely to receive, like in California the roads need to be built to resist melting. Once those roads are made they have to be properly maintained, or they become just as dangerous, if not more so than any oversight or environmental condition. Driving is more dangerous than it should be, but it can be made safer if society decides to put in the work.