Name: Edward Zhang
From: Wynnewood, PA
Votes: 1
Growing
up riding in the back seat, the driver’s seat always looked like
the promised land. Before pulling out the driveway, my parents always
seemed to perform endless protocols with the knobs and switches and
buttons that littered the dashboard in what looked like the startup
sequence of a rocket ship. When I was finally old enough to ride
shotgun, I began to see the labyrinth of vehicles that my parents had
to weave through every day.
When
my parents began prepping me to take the wheel by teaching me about
mirror adjustment, blind spots, and road etiquette, I slowly grew to
understand that driving was much more complicated than simply
stepping on the gas to zoom forward. Rather, I realized that driving
is actually a system comprised of millions of moving parts built on
trust amongst drivers and respect for traffic law. However, when my
mother got into an accident trying to make a turn, I learned that
simply obeying the law was not enough to be safe on the road.
Thankfully, she was not hurt in the collision, but at the time of the
accident, she legally had the right of way. The driver that had
rammed into her broken the law in a hurry when trying to speed past
the intersection; however, in the end, they both ended up with dented
cars. From then on, my parents always cautioned me that “it takes
two to make an accident” and to always “drive defensively.”
The
big issue with these types of accidents is that they are completely
preventable. Had my mother been more cognizant of the fact that not
everyone always follows the rules and simply reacted to let the other
driver pass, nothing would have happened. However, the fact that
these sorts of accidents still exist is indicative of an issue with
the psyche of the general driving public. The way that young drivers
currently earn their license is by passing a test designed to
evaluate if they know and can properly follow traffic laws. However,
as my mother’s accident clearly indicates, simply obeying the law
is not enough. Drivers ed could drastically reduce the number
of annual car-related deaths by placing more emphasis on defensive
driving techniques; from day one, drivers would be more aware of
their impact on the massive system of other drivers around them.
Furthermore,
car manufacturers should be given incentives to develop technologies
that promote defensive driving like automatic stops, blind spot
detection, and even something as simple as optimizing head and tail
lamp placement to better telegraph cars’ intentions of turning and
stopping; these companies should be encouraged to innovate in this
field until cars can completely make up for any mistakes caused by
their human drivers. All of these changes would lead to a society of
more cautious and spatially aware drivers with radically lower car
accident related deaths. However, until any of this comes to
fruition, I can do my part in reducing these deaths by driving more
defensively.
