What it Means to be in the Driver's Seat

Your late for work. You know it’s a long drive and if your late one more time you’re going to get fired. You turn on the engine and pull out of you driveway. You hit the gas, the only thing running through your mind is an image of the pink slip on your desk when you arrive. You can’t let that happen, you won’t let that happen. You have spent too much of your life devoted to this job to allow that to happen. You make a sharp right ignoring the stop sign and see a giant truck plowing down the street. The next thing you know the whole world is upside down, and then, you slip into silence.

This is the fate of nearly 40,000 people every year. And I can tell you that they weren’t thinking to wait a few seconds before turning or look both ways. So many people forget that driving is dangerous, but in order to save the lives of so many individuals in the future we have to remind them of what it means to be in the driver’s seat, and that starts at the beginning.

Educating drivers on the dangers of driving is crucial, but in order for drivers ed class to be remembered, it needs to be impactful and resonate with people. When I asked my friends, who had already taken drivers ed what it was like, they couldn’t say much about it other than it was something that you had to do. So, in turn I didn’t expect much out of it. However, when I arrived for my first class it wasn’t at all what I had expected I learned a lot about the rules of the road that I never really noticed until then. I hear stories that reinforced the dangers of driving and learned for the first time what defensive driving was. It was in that class where I learned what it meant to be in the driver’s seat.

I have been lucky enough to have never been in an accident, but there have been countless times where those closest to me have. Whenever I hear that someone has been in an accident my heart drops and I think, Oh my God, this can’t be real, its not fair why them. It is in those moments when I am reminded that this is not a joke or a game, driving is serious, and people need to understand the dangers of being in the drivers seat.

To prevent driving related deaths adults should consistently be enforcing the fact that driving is dangerous and a privilege into the youth. They should also be reminded that while anything can be a distraction when driving. To prevent accidents automobile companies should look into ways to eliminate distraction on the road. With these reminders of how serious driving is will help people understand what it means to be in the driver’s seat, once we have done that then we have started to save lives.