As a teenager, I think that driver's education is a very important and necessary tool to help keep the safety of ourselves and those around us. Starting at 15 years old, we are allowed to get behind the wheel of a two ton slab of metal and have to learn how to drive without endangering anyone else. I personally feel that driver's education genuinely taught me important lessons and safety precautions that I otherwise would not have known or thought about. For me, going to a public drivers education class helped me learn and actually remember the information taught. Drivers education teaches you about looking out for motorcycles, which is a common occurrence for people to miss and cause fatality to the rider, and they also taught about blind spots when driving.
I am glad that driver's education is required, but I do wish that even after a certain age, the class was still required. There was so much information that I learned in drivers education that if I waited until I was 17 and just took the drivers test that I wouldn’t know. I think that requiring drivers education of some sort for any age would greatly reduce the amount of road deaths. There are many people that logistically can drive and know the basic road rules but under certain circumstances or in an unexpected situation, they don’t know how to handle themselves. Driving in the snow or how to be a defensive driver are very important tools to know that many people never learned and it puts themselves and others at risk of danger.
Not having distractions while driving is tremendously important to be a safe driver. A lot of teens I know have many stimuli while driving. They have their friends in the car, music playing, eating food, paying attention to navigation, or some even text and drive and all of these things take attention away from the road and put you in danger. So many accidents happen very quickly and so many of them as the name implies, were accidents that you didn’t realize or didn’t see or didn’t pay attention to the road to have a chance to avoid this. Many people get in accidents that are not their fault but if they were paying better attention could possibly have avoided it. I think that having little to no distractions when driving is one of the single most important things that can help to lower the amount of crashes and deaths in vehicle accidents.
I was in a single vehicle car crash in march of 2020 and after this crash it shaped how I looked at driving a lot differently. My crash luckily involved no other vehicle, or any foul play such as phones, but merely falling asleep and upon realizing I was going off the road over corrected and ran my vehicle off the road. My vehicle went up a bank and hit a power pole mid air which stopped my vehicle from rolling. My vehicle was totaled but somehow I walked out of the crash with only a bruise. After that crash I realized how dangerous driving can be when you are not in control or don’t know what you are doing. They did teach me in drivers education that if you ever swerve to not over-correct but gently guide yourself back but it was very different when it happened in real life. I think that they should make sure to capitalize on this idea of how to recover from swerving or going off the road because I was not prepared for a situation other than the normal protocols of driving. I was already a cautious driver, but after this incident I realized the importance of being a defensive driver and truly being in control of the vehicle. Learning the physics of how vehicles work and how they move when they crash to help people understand the mechanics of how when you swerve it can shoot your vehicle the other direction or cause your vehicle to start rolling and such.
I think that limiting distractions in cars such as too loud of music, phones, and too much stimulation can help you be a more observant and defensive driver. Watching what other people do when driving is important in case other people make mistakes so that you can prevent having an accident. I also think that driving with an experienced adult is very important and that there should be different requirements that they need to experience before driving on their own. Driving is a huge responsibility and I think that making sure that the people driving are ready is an important part of teaching driving and being a driver. Knowing your limits on driving and getting experience while being safe is very important. Driver's education is a very important aspect of learning to drive today and I am very grateful that it is a requirement and I hope it can improve in the future as well.