The Root Cause of Dangerous Driving and the Ways to Mitigate this Issue

I love cars and everything to do with driving–well, almost everything, I do not particularly like traffic. I see it as a stressful nuisance, and it typically brings the worst out of drivers. Traffic, no matter how fast or slow it is moving, requires a very well educated, safe, and defensive driver to act accordingly to react to any unforeseen movements by oneself or other drivers.

Often, I hear people say the only problem with our roads is that we don’t have enough enforcement of traffic laws, that if we put up more speed cameras then our roads will be safer. I believe, however, this logic only works if most of the population are good drivers. When people say this, I think of the German Autobahn; this road system is famous for having no speed limit over a large portion of the highways, but what most people don’t appreciate is that despite drivers cruising at 100-180 mph (depending which car they drive), these roads are vastly safer than American Interstates, which have, on average, twice as many deaths per mile travelled. How could it be that a highway with no speed limit and people that pay for and use the whole speedometer be safer than roads with speed limits? The simple answer is driver education is taken far more seriously and adhered to there, and the rules of the road are strictly enforced, not just by the police, but culturally as well.

Driving is by far the most dangerous activity which is performed daily, but it is rarely treated like that. People are often unaware of how dangerous driving a giant metal box weighing multiple tons at high speeds is, even if constantly warned about the dangers. This is an unquestionable fact and is made plainly obvious in the way that I have observed many people driving, both here and in Europe.

However much this is shown to be a problem, safety features are always the solution. Safety features seem to be the buzzword that will make the problem of unsafe driving disappear by making cars with many electronic nannies and driver assistance features that help make it more difficult to crash. From what I have noticed, however, from personal experience, is that these driver assistance features often make people even worse drivers as they are now reliant on a computer to correct all their errors, which gives a false sense of being infallible– “the technology is working so I don’t have to.” Admittedly, I see this in myself when I drive my car, which has no such features bar traction control versus driving my mum’s minivan, which has lane keep assist, automatic high beams, automatic braking, and a back-up camera. This is the same phenomenon we see with computers and math skills; we no longer can do complex or even simple operations using just our brains and are reliant on a calculator function to do those, often “just to check.”

Eventually, considering basic human biology, there will be a new solution to our woes, self-driving cars, which I consider to be just another band-aid, albeit the last possible one to fix the problem of dangerous cars. This still doesn’t fix the problem of cars being dangerous and won’t even begin to mitigate the problem, especially not for pedestrians. 

Since more technology, more automated enforcement, and more safety features do not solve dangerous driving, the only true way to fix this problem is to continually educate drivers and give more options to bad or uncomfortable drivers to get off the road. I would like to focus on the education aspect of this problem as it is by far the easiest and cheapest way to make drivers safer overall.

Education and knowledge are power, especially when it is the difference between life and death. I believe our driving education courses should be far more rigorous and greater emphasis should be placed on bicycle and pedestrian awareness, lane etiquette (this goes to all the left lane hogs I see driving around), and driving cars without the use of driver-assistance features with actual trained instruction on how to drive. This should also be more memorable, I for one could not remember a single thing pertaining to my drivers’ education, I recall more of it just reading the road signs and obeying them to a tee, which is not necessarily wrong, but it leaves out nuance and some more unspoken rules of the road. 

This clearly has not worked well, as I, like many others, learned the vast majority of my driving knowledge from experience and external sources, like learning about other countries and their rules of the road. I have learned that the main reason our highways are so dangerous compared to Germany (despite Germans going over 100 miles an hour on these highways) is due to them having supreme education, especially pertaining to lane discipline. Left lane hogs are one of the primary reasons why traffic is so inefficient, and it needs to be more culturally enforced than just ignored. Make sure the left lane hog moves over rather than passing them on the right. It is less dangerous and will allow traffic to move faster. In Germany, only the good drivers pass the test, and if they are not naturally talented, they must retake the test and do not get their license until they have proved they are capable of driving in any conditions with any car, however many tests they need to take.

There is no reason we cannot implement this in this country. If we use stricter driving instruction, retesting, and more memorable educational programs for drivers, then we can lower the danger of our roads significantly, making it a far safer place for drivers, pedestrians, and everyone and everything that shares our roads.