When I was first learning how to drive, I was terrified. To be honest, I still find it a bit intimidating today. Though it’s only natural to feel fear when doing something as unnatural as hurling oneself forward in a metal box with a push of a pedal. My lack of experience behind the wheel didn’t help quell such anxiety either. That sort of fear isn’t really unwarranted, because driving is inherently dangerous, especially for teenage drivers like myself.
Any sort of predicament on the road is much more dangerous when a teen driver is involved. Now this isn’t because all teen drivers are erratic children who, with undeserved confidence, think they can cheat death by making the most rash and dumb decision possible while behind the wheel. Unfortunately, being a teenager puts them at more risk automatically. To start, the biggest issue teen drivers face is their inherent lack of experience behind the wheel, which is only made worse by their second biggest hurdle, their lack of life experience. Teen drivers' safety is at so much of a risk simply because they are new to both the chaos of the road and of life. They make terrible split second decisions under pressure because they simply don’t have experience in making such decisions. Simply by being a teenager who drives, one’s safety is automatically more at risk than others on the road. Such is why ensuring teen driver safety, and at the very least minimizing the risk to it, is such an important public issue.
Yet the important issue of teenage driver safety is not one with an easy solution. The biggest hurdle for teen drivers, and therefore the biggest challenge to their safety, is their inexperience behind the wheel. So how can one make up for their lack of experience? The most straightforward way to overcome a deficit in driving experience is to drive more. Sadly this solution is not optimal, since driving means risking teenagers’ safety since they are inexperienced, which brings us back to the original issue. So, what is the alternative? If teen driver safety is at risk because of how unfamiliar they are with the many unpredictable predicaments that occur on the road, the best way for them to become familiar with them without putting the teenagers at risk is to learn about them. Driver’s education presents a multitude of scenarios that teen drivers haven’t had the chance to face and shows them how to deal with them. Such is what makes driver’s education so important.
It is vital in addressing the safety of teen drivers because of how it can prepare teenage drivers for what they might see on the road. While no amount of education can truly prepare a person to face danger, it can, at the very least, act as a reassurance and in the best case, can help teen drivers avoid such dangerous predicaments altogether. Teenagers are going to be bad at making decisions on the road quickly, but driver's education can help limit the amount of options they have to choose from. Driver’s education can even help teen drivers avoid the need to make risky decisions in the first place by instilling safe driving habits into teens that they otherwise wouldn’t pick up as quickly,
Such safe driving habits can be as simple as paying attention to the condition of the road or taking into account what is going on around the road. These habits are taught in Driver’s education and are vital in minimizing the risk to teen driver safety on the road. The habits listed were what kept my friend safe when they were driving home, since they took into account how dark it was, and the fact that there would be more animals jumping onto the roads due to the fireworks going off that night. Without taking these factors into account, my friend could’ve easily gotten hurt simply by driving as they normally would. Their safe driving habits are what made them drive slower and more attentively and what ultimately allowed them to return home safely.
Driving can be scary, but it doesn’t have to be. If teens are willing to learn safe drifting habits and schools and communities are willing to teach them, the risk to teen driver safety can be minimized. While teen driver safety cannot be completely without risk, and experience can’t be replaced just with driver’s education, one teenage driver knowing how to keep themself safe on the road makes the roads safer for every teenage driver.