Driver education is a vital part of helping to prevent the number of deaths. There are no negative effects to driver education courses. People get into accidents because whoever caused the accidents ignored something they learned within a driver safety course. Even though the death rate from motor vehicle accidents is still extremely high, driver education courses are the only reason the rate of death and accidents is not higher. There are multiple steps to be taken to further limit the number of accidents involving motor vehicles every year. The most prevalent of these steps is to induce harsher consequences for breaking laws, such as speeding and driving recklessly. By inflating the consequences of breaking the laws in your car, it will majorly discourage drivers from breaking the law causing them to put themselves and everyone around them at risk. The next step to be taken toward safety within a vehicle is more intensive education towards how your vehicle functions and routine maintenance that needs to be done on your vehicle. There are several accidents happening every year that could have been avoided if drivers had serviced their brakes and tire when they should have. The reason a lot of drivers are not responsible with taking care of their vehicle is because of the lack of education towards how to maintain your vehicle. The final step that can be taken towards preventing accidents on the road every year is to place a larger amount of signs of remote roads describing the road ahead of them. A lot of accidents that occur on country roads are caused by lack of knowledge of the road. By placing more signs describing the road ahead, such as turns, stop signs, and narrow roads, we could bring the driver’s capability to operate their vehicle on these roads in a safe manner up drastically.
I have never had the experience of being in a major car accident, but a minor one. I was in the car with a friend of mine in the winter, and we were coming up on a curve when his car slid across ice. Due to his car sliding out of control, we ended up in the ditch with a fair amount of damage to his car. This goes to show that you can be doing absolutely everything right and still end up in an accident while driving. The difference was that my friend was driving at a reasonable speed. By driving at a reasonable speed, he severely limited the risk of our health. As a result of this, neither my friend or I were injured in any way during the accident. I have experienced several friends driving recklessly because they do not yet understand the consequences of driving recklessly when something does not go the way they thought it would. My friends do not understand that one mishap in their vehicle driving recklessly could end their life. My friends also have a bad habit of driving whilst distracted. My friends drive while eating food and doing homework. They do these things when they are running late on their schedule for the day. They also text, call, change music, and check social media while driving. They do these things because they are ignorant to the risks of doing them. My friends would rather leave the gas station thirty seconds earlier and check their phone while driving instead of waiting thirty seconds at the gas station and checking their phone before beginning to drive.
I can take steps to become a better driver as nobody is perfect. My biggest step I could take to be a safer driver for those around me would be to make sure my bright lights are off when approaching oncoming traffic. I need to be more attentive at times while I am behind the wheel of my vehicle. I need to be more conscious about driving at night with little to no sleep when I am feeling tired. I have a bad habit of driving while I am tired due to the schedule of my life with work, school, and workouts for sports. I just need to plan ahead of time to make sure I am not driving when I am feeling drowsy, especially at night. I can help take steps to make others better drivers by looking out for our surroundings on the road when I am riding with them. I also need to make sure to not distract the driver of the car I am riding in in any way possible.