In the modern day, there are more distractions than ever present on the road. From the phones in our hands, to the music on the radio, and our friends with us in our cars, we are surrounded by stimuli to capture our brain's attention. As a teen driver, I see this all around me with people whom I’ve driven with or people who I’ve observed on the road. Driving safety is a matter of the utmost importance seeing as to how deadly vehicles are, one small mistake being able to turn life to death.
Teen Driving Safety is an important public issue because the large populous of new drivers are teens who have little experience handling automotive vehicles. Proper driving safety lessons are necessary in educating teens on the risk of looking away from the road or showing off for friends, possibly resulting in thousands of dollars in damages and even death. Driver's education plays the role of a safeguard, a method of teaching teen drivers on how to act and ensuring that they understand the consequences of reckless driving.
The possible distractions on the road are limitless, a text from a friend, the allure of the dopamine of Tik-Tok, vibrant billboards with distracting advertisements, and many more; these challenges make it much more difficult to focus on driving, especially as a teen. When driving with friends, it is all too common for there to be peer pressure to drive fast or pass other drivers, pressure to drive recklessly overall. Through the teen years of life impressing friends is dangerously important psychologically yet in situations like this, the smart and safe option is to talk to your friends and tell them to stop, explaining the dangers of unsafe driving. The consequences are much more severe than any adrenaline rush gained by recklessness. Education is key, education on the legal ramifications of unsafe driving and how that will affect you for the rest of your life, education on the human ramifications of taking someone's life, possibly being your own. The biggest distraction in modern driving is the phone, it is incredibly easy to say that you are quickly checking something and then missing something on the road and causing an accident. I urge teens and all drivers to wait to check your phone, even if it is urgent. Pull over if you need to respond to a text or call someone, wait until you are at a red light to take a look at the text you got, have a passenger respond for you, wait the extra 5 minutes until you get to your destination to text someone back, do not text and drive. It is incredibly dangerous and can change the course of your life within the blink of an eye. As a passenger, I recommend to dissuade the driver from accessing their phone while driving, even just to change a song. It is the passengers responsibility to take such actions for the driver so that they can focus on the road. The best solution to combat lack of experience is driving with an experienced driver or attending driving school and learning one step at a time, first in a parking lot, then a small street, then a slightly larger street and so on. Do not attempt to thrust yourself into the deep end and try to learn to swim without being able to stand. Take the time to learn and do not rush, hone the skills of the road and the rules of the road to avoid catastrophe.
A moment of my life where I executed safe driving habits ensuring the safety of myself and others was earlier in my senior year of high school, where I attended an event with my friends. They had all been intoxicated by the time we left yet I was sober as the designated driver and the one who generally avoids substances. Whilst driving everyone home, we came to a hill which we were at the bottom of, I was driving below the speed limit as it was dark and I wanted to stay safe. My friends had started trying to tell me to drive fast and speed up the hill, chanting and pleading with me to “drive fun”. I refused many times outright, driving up the hill at the speed at which I had before, slow and steady. Once reaching the top I saw a police car parked waiting near the top at the side of the road, if I had sped up, I surely would have gotten a ticket or worse. Ahead was also a traffic light which was red, cars being backed up. At the bottom of the hill this wasn't visible so if I had sped up the top, it is likely I would've gone over and hit the cars, causing both damage and likely harm. I later explained to my friends how safe driving habits saved us in that scenario but to this day, I’m not sure how much they listened, but driving safe kept us out of both legal trouble and prevented an accident.
In order to promote safer driving habits for teens, I believe that schools and communities should be more extreme and blunt in defining the consequences of driving recklessly, even if they are somewhat unrealistic. The fear of these consequences will likely convince many more youths to drive safely and ensure that their friends drive safely. Education is also extremely important so schools should have more programs in which they teach students how to drive safely and what not to do in order for a safe trip. All in all, safe driving falls into the hands of the drivers and I believe that many are not truly cognizant of the tragedy that can be caused by dangerous driving and education on this matter is of the utmost importance.