Steering towards Safety

My whole life, I have been taught the importance of safe driving. Whether it was from speeches my parents would drill into me, assignments I’d complete in my driver's education class, or even real-life examples such as car crashes I would see on the highway. Although I’d been told that safe driving was important, it never really sank in. I would hear of kids my age in car accidents or see the consequences of dangerous driving depicted on television, but I always believed I was the exception. Then I started riding my bike to school.

I knew that the road was more dangerous for me as a pedestrian rather than a passenger, so I took extreme caution to avoid being hit. I would watch for a car’s turning signals so I would know the direction they were going, or I would wear bright colors in the morning to avoid blending in with my surroundings. I would even wait three seconds after the crosswalk said “walk” to make sure a car did not turn unexpectedly. I took extra precautions to make sure I was safe on the road. I thought that if I was careful enough, I would be fine. But that all changed when my friend got in an accident.

It was a wake-up call. She was hit on the same route I took every day on the way to school. If I had been biking two or three minutes earlier, we both would have been hit. That is when I realized I had been lucky. The drivers I interacted with were more attentive and cautious, but my friend had not been as fortunate as I was. All it took was one distracted driver to change her life forever.

Unfortunately, this is not a rare occurrence. A study done by AAA found that up to 96% of U.S. drivers have admitted to engaging in dangerous or reckless behavior while driving. However, driving safely should not be negotiable but required. One mistake can harm someone’s life or end it.

I obtained my learner’s permit a couple of months ago, and being in the driver’s seat has opened my eyes to how difficult it is. Driving takes multitasking to another level.  But safe driving is one of the top ways we can keep our citizens safe. If the roads are safer, so are our drivers and pedestrians. Whenever I am driving, I follow three rules to keep the people around me and myself safe:

1.      Eliminate all distractions. This means putting my cellphone on Do Not Disturb, refraining from answering telephone calls, removing any distractions from the car’s dashboard, or even asking passengers to be quieter when I’m driving. Removing these distractions ensures that my focus is solely on the road. This way, if something unexpected happens, I am more alert, and I have a quicker response time.

3.      Finally, don’t drive when you’re emotional or tired. This goes hand in hand with reckless driving. If someone is emotional or tired, it is harder for them to focus and make good decisions. They might go 15 over the speed limit just to test their luck because they are upset, or they might fall asleep at the wheel and risk hurting themself or someone else. All these scenarios could be avoided if they just took some time to relax or rest, even if it is only for 10 minutes.

Although I know to follow these rules, not everyone does. But ensuring that drivers are educated is fundamental to keeping our citizens safe. The more educated drivers there are, the safer the roads are. According to Ellen Edmonds from AAA, “Driver education is associated with a lower incidence of both crashes and convictions- reducing crashes by 4.3 percent and convictions by nearly 40 percent.”

If the driver who hit my friend had been more cautious, my friend might not have had to go through the trauma that the car accident caused her, and she is not the only one. Countless other people could be uninjured or alive today if a driver had just been more careful.

Every accident reminds us that both educating people about safe driving and enforcing it are becoming increasingly important. Although the term is “car accident,” the accident isn’t caused by a car; it’s caused by the driver.