When I was younger, I didn’t want to drive. Not because I was
scared I wasn’t capable of driving safely but because I was scared
of the other people on the road. You always hear of innocent people
getting tragically killed by drunk drivers daily, which I didn’t
want to be the next victim. At the time, my father couldn’t
comprehend why I was so afraid of driving, but how could I expect
someone who didn’t grow up with death rates higher than debt rates?

In
high school, nobody truly takes driving seriously or the importance
of the education. I never understood that until I reached my junior
year. As we know, the younger generation is known for having
distracted drivers, but if that’s the case, why don’t we try to
change. From what I concluded from living in this generation, we hate
people telling us what to do even if it’s for our own good. The
reason we need a driver’s safety course in school and we need our
parents to put us through drivers ed, is not to punish us but is
yet to save us and help us in the end.

The
steps that can be taken to reduce the number of deaths is to educate
the younger generation. I think all high schools should have a
driving course that teaches you the “basics” of driving. I wish
they would teach you what to do in emergencies or even how to change
a tire. If people don’t want to learn themselves, the least you can
do is educate them in school and try to help them.

I
have experienced about two car accidents in my high school career. My
first car accident was when I was going to Walmart with my best
friend, and we were singing and dancing to the latest Maroon 5 song
on the radio that we had been obsessing over, and it was five o’clock
traffic. She didn’t really notice how fast she happened to be going
in a fairly slow area, and the cars around us started pounding on
their breaks and her reaction time wasn’t quite fast enough and we
hit the guy in front of us. Gratefully, nobody was hurt but it was a
changing experience for the both of us. It really showed me, even
though I wasn’t the driver, I can still be a distracting person in
the car to the other person, and to my friend, she learned that when
she is driving, that’s her only job.

What
I can do better is not being distracted while driving. Like many in
my generation, we struggle with the concept that our life is more
important than changing the song on my phone or answering a phone
call. When I was 14 and learning how to drive, I wish my parents made
me take a drivers ed class, instead of letting me just
drive fifty hours and having them teach me. I think I would’ve
learned more about the road and the safety measures needed to be
taken to save lives. This is something I wish I would’ve known and
I’m hoping to share the message to others.