Sitting in the classroom after school every Thursday was what one could say miserable. The anticipation of driving on my own was starting to seem out of reach. Week after week, I would sit in a classroom watching the sun go down listening to tragic events that I thought were meant to scare me. I listen to stories that sound almost unbelievable and realize the point of this class, they want me to drive like a grandma. Our grandparents follow all the rules and are usually never caught speeding. They do not pick up their phone and they are not out driving super late. The common point to all these things is that they are the causes of accidents.
Listening to all these horrific accidents that are easily avoidable, I promised myself that I would be a responsible driver. But it was not until earlier this year when everything started to make sense. This September a classmate of mine tragically died in a car accident. Although she was making responsible decisions in her car, the other car was not. This is when I realized that I missed an important thing that they teach in the classroom. Even if you do everything right and drive safely, you still have to be aware of your surroundings.
This death really affected me and made me scared for my safety behind the wheel. As I have been moving past this tragic event, I have come to realize that this was what drivers ed was teaching me. This is what had me in that boring classroom for weeks. The teacher standing in front of the room is trying to bring change, so that no more people are killed. The more kids that take this course, the better and safer the roads will be. Although it is a pain, and everyone knows that it is, it is absolutely worth it. It makes someone like me learn the importance of staying off my phone in the car, not driving at speeds that I cannot control, and to never drink and get behind a wheel. It is good to have a little fear in a car, it is good to have a little fear in anything. Fear allows people to respect things, and to me, that is what drivers ed gave me.
It seems that the high number of deaths due to driving is an unavoidable thing, but no one wants that. There are many people who disrespect rules, but there are many who respect the rules. Obviously teens are inexperienced drivers that do make mistakes and cause accidents, but it is also up to the others on the road to respect them. Rather than swerving around someone who is going under the speed limit, just let them be, so you do not frazzle them. Although most people follow the rules of the world, most people are inpatient. People are always in a rush. The amount of accidents due to impatience and rushing is unbelievable, an easy solution to this is to give yourself an extra twenty minutes. The causes for many accidents are avoidable and it is time for people to actually avoid these unavoidable accidents by making changes.
Everyone knows how they can become a better driver, and it is time that they take their own advice. Being that I am freshly out I drivers ed, I still drive very conservatively, making me a somewhat stiff driver. I am still learning how to correctly react in certain scenarios, with this I still have a long way to go before I drive like everyone else. But in reality, the way I drive is the way everyone else should, everyone should drive with extra caution, as of right now it is those who drive with caution that make everyone frustrated. It should be normal to see people drive carefully and it should be an annoyance when people drive recklessly. Just like many things in the world, the idea of driving is out of whack.
Although I experienced a car related death as a somewhat outsider, it affected me more than many could imagine. It is scary to think that someone the same age as you can die, and it is even scarier to think that they had no control of the situation. As those who experience a terrible tragedy like that, it is our job to help make it stop. Even if just one less person dies this year due to a vehicle accident that is an improvement. And if it keeps going down one by one every year, things are changing for the better. Obviously this is not something that can be stopped overnight, or at all, but by decreasing the quantity, many more people will get to spend another day with their families. By reading this, I hope that at least one person can understand that they too can fix the way they themself drive and will never be the reason that someone does not go home that night.