Teen driving is a massive issue due to their general lack of experience in an activity that can be extremely dangerous to those who are not experienced in it. There is a massive shift in responsibility, which many teens may not have experienced prior. If not handled carefully, car accidents can ruin the lives of drivers - both the one responsible for the accident and any victims of it - as well as the lives of onlookers. Teen drivers lacking experience would be one of the biggest factors, if not for Drivers Ed to help lessen the burden
As a young driver, nervousness was the biggest thing that affected my driving. Learning how to actually control the car, being afraid of making mistakes, gathering hours driving with my father, driving on unfamiliar roads - all made me nervous, which made me a significantly worse driver. My Driver’s Ed courses helped take the edge off, getting me used to driving in general. Especially without the judgement of a parent being involved. That is, in my opinion, part of the reason why Driver’s Ed is so important. After I finished my first course, where the 2nd was gatekept by getting hours, I had to drive with my dad. It was significantly more stressful than driving around with my instructors, which made me nervous. So nervous, in fact, I never even got all the hours to take the 2nd course and get my license when I was still a teen! I ended up getting it at 18 by taking a standard drivers test. Which I had to take twice, because my nervousness distracted me so hard from not turning into a “wrong way” sign on the highway that I almost turned into oncoming traffic the first time.
Obviously, the experience I got from Driver’s Ed was not nearly enough to fully calm my nerves during the test - and to be fair, that is probably the reason they require you to get extra hours before taking part two of the course. Lucky for me, I have yet to get in any major accidents, and only one was my fault - I was in a place I had never been before, trying to find a way back home, pulled over and parked at a gas station to pull up directions… then accidentally backed into a truck. Point of the story, I was nervous, and being nervous is what has caused pretty much all of my mistakes on the road. There are tons of causations for teen drivers to be nervous - many of which I brought up earlier. I think the best solution for helping teen drivers is to help get them over this nervousness that comes with being a new driver. A good, professional, and calming instructor would help at the beginning, of course, but also provide safe spaces and communities for teen drivers after the fact. Slowly introduce unfamiliar driving experiences instead of driving the same safe roads over and over again - roads with potholes, construction, weird or unique traffic conditions that wouldn’t be seen normally. As a personal grievance, I do not like being told abruptly “turn here,” or “in 3 miles,” or whatever - so I believe that having a planned out route ahead of time that the instructor can show in a way that is not distracting would be greatly beneficial. Knowing where you are going is much more helpful and nerve reducing.
There are of course other issues facing teen drivers today. A big one is distractions - phones being one of the biggest. There are adults who go around on calls, watching tiktok and other videos, I can only imagine young drivers having even worse issues with their phones being a distraction. While laws do help with these issues, teens are not exactly prime examples of following rules to the full extent. Encouragement past just consequences of the law and the likely physical harm that would occur in a crash needs to be implemented, somehow. The only thing I can think of off the top of my head is to normalize the total absence of phones while driving - have instructors, parents, drivers, and every passenger completely mute their phones while the car is in anything other than park. Maybe even separate the driver from their phone temporarily, put it in the glove compartment or something similar. Minimize other distractions as well, like not driving with friends until a certain point, or listening to a different genre of music than you normally would to prevent that from becoming a distraction as well.
To circle back around to something I only briefly brought up earlier, driving with my dad was always way more stressful to me than driving with an instructor. Without that first portion of driver’s ed teaching me the basics, I likely would not have gotten my license any time soon, and would have ended up spending hundreds of thousands on Uber or something to get back and forth to college. Drivers Ed gives teen drivers a place to learn how to drive, under the guise and safety of professional drivers, without the scrutiny or worry of their parents. It is, ultimately, an essential tool for ensuring that the next generation of drivers knows how to properly drive. If nothing else, it should be made more affordable and accessible to young teens. Not all families can afford to spend half a grand to afford these classes - mine barely could.