Having immigrated from the Philippines in his late teens, my father never formally learned how to drive. He needed to learn fast so he could provide for his family, so he slapdashedly repaired my uncle’s old car and got his driver’s license before truly learning the intricacies and dangers of the road. As opposed to my mother, who did receive a formal driver education through a program my grandparents put her through.
She has never been involved in a car crash in all her thirty years of owning a license. My father has been in three.
I believe driver education is important not only to reduce the totaling of cars and the amount of collateral damage it causes, but to save lives. In hindsight, my father could have died in any of his crashes – thankfully, he escaped relatively unscathed each time. But will there be a next time? What about then? What about other people on the roads who might not be as lucky as my father? How many more people have to die because of ignorance?
The price of a driving instructor is too high. Life does not have a price – why do we then apply a materialistic value to it? Mandatory driver instructors should be stationed at every school, free of charge. My mother tells me high schools used to offer these driver education classes, but most districts have cancelled them years ago. I propose we reinstate it, so that the young, carefree masses such as myself are prepared to take on the chaotic roads. So the numbers of fatalities will stagnante, and eventually drop with each new, skilled driver entering the streets.
Two of the three crashes my father has been in happened because he was not paying attention to the road. I feel people who have not been fortunate enough to receive a formal driving education like my father might not understand the necessity of defensive driving. A mandatory, all encompassing class that warns students not only about the dangers of texting while driving, but under influence and distraction, will prevent us from making those mistakes. Lives will be saved and new futures will be cultivated that could have never been possible before without the help of driver education.
I myself will partake in learning how to drive through a driving school. I do not want to endanger myself or my fellow people on the road just because I am untrained. But I wish the driver education can be taken by all students, so that all of us together, can make Arizona’s roads safer.