The Deadly Peril of Disobedience

By Elizabeth Rogers

Over the course of history, people have always acknowledged the importance of education. From civilizations as early as the Mesopotamians and the Mayans, society has acknowledged that education is a fundamental basis of society. For example, over the centuries, we have created a way to prevent unnecessary death through the training and education of doctors. Governments have created a process that involves years of training and experience before one can even become a practicing doctor in order to prevent these doctors from causing unnecessary deaths caused by a lack of education. This idea of enough education to ensure that people do not die is also applicable to driver’s education. This principle should be even more heavily enforced in this situation as there is only 1 million doctors practicing in the United States, but there are 225 million drivers. So, if we place such heavy emphasis on making sure our medical professionals are properly trained, it would make sense that drivers ed is one of the top priorities in our country. Every year, 34,000 people die because of driving related accidents, a number that is considerably high since every single one of those deaths were unnecessary. This number could be easily lowered by making sure that every single driver receives enough education about the risks of driving and behaviors to avoid while driving.  I believe that the ancient writer Sophocles said it best, that “There is no more deadly peril than disobedience”, meaning that when most people die, it is usually since someone was not following the rules. This is relevant because all car accidents are caused by someone not following the rules of the road. Thus, a logical response to this high number of deaths is to highlight the importance of drivers ed early to our country’s young and blossoming drivers in order to protect them from making the mistakes that cause either take their own lives or the lives of people around them.