What It Means to Drive

Karyn Jean-Jacques Drivers ed Initiative Awards What it means to Drive As a young child, it's always been a dream to drive. Everyone just made it look so easy. They just sit in the driver's seat and go wherever it is they want. As I got older I realized it wasn’t that easy and it was far from simple. The first day of taking driving lessons, I witnessed reckless driving. The car was speeding and skipped a full stop, almost colliding with the car I was driving. My instructor was understandably strict when it came to teaching the lessons of the road. He made sure I stayed vigilant. He advised me that there was no need to rush, “it’s better to get there safe and alive than to never show up at all.” The rules of driving are extremely crucial. It gives you so much insight about what it is you should and shouldn’t do while on the road and without it, there would be a lot more fatalities. ofcourse, there are still an abundance of tragedies that stem from car accidents. The steps that we, as a society, should take to reduce them is up to us. It's not just about punishment. No amount of punishment can bring back a life. We need more car companies to implement sensors that will allow the car to come to an abrupt stop and they should be affordable. Cars with this feature are a lot more expensive and many settle without it. Driving lessons should also be more efficient because too many times instructors just teach their students HOW to drive and never teach them what it MEANS to drive. They let them go out and learn for themselves and that can be dangerous. The most important step is for all us to stay vigilant and be smart. Don’t drink or text while driving. Test your brakes before going to your destination. Don’t speed. It’ll save your life and many others. Life is precious and losing a life because of someone’s careless mistakes or even their own is heartbreaking. It's a heartbreak my whole city had to endure. The morning of June 10, 2020 was brought with so much tragedy when five Newark natives, two of which I knew, were involved in a devastating car accident. Three beautiful lives were taken. My mind began racing and I just kept asking myself how did this happen? Why did this happen? I wanted answers but I didn’t have any. We found out that on their way back from the beach, the car hit the guard rail and blew up in flames. God knows what happened before that. It hurts to know that those young kids had a whole life ahead of them and it was cut short. For the ones that survived, they have to live with so much trauma. That day, I vowed to be the safest driver I can be by staying aware and being smart because “it’s better to get there safe and alive than to never show up at all.”