Safe Driving in Today’s Society

Ashley
Riker

Youth
Forward Scholarship: In the Driver’s Seat

April
1, 2019

Safe Driving in Today’s Society

Driving
is something that most people in the world experience in their life,
whether it be physically driving a car themselves or being a
passenger in a vehicle. However, there are many people in the world
that should not be allowed to drive as they endanger others with the
way that they drive. Learning the importance of being a safe driver
starts with drivers ed. Drivers ed is taught in
many high schools across the nation and for adults there are driving
schools that they could take. Driving a car holds a level of
responsibility that some people cannot handle. When taking driver’s
education my junior year of high school, my teacher made it very
clear the amounts of teenagers and young adults that are careless
when they drive and not only affect their own lives but the lives of
others. Some teens and young adults think that driving dangerously
with friends makes them look cool. However, being safe when driving
and looking out for your own life and the lives of the passengers in
the car is better than trying to be cool. When someone dies in a car
accident, one or more of the drivers in the accident is to blame for
something that they learned not to do in drivers’ education. There
are steps that can be taken to reduce the number of deaths related to
driving such as retesting people at a certain age and creating a tool
that would be in the car that would alert someone if reckless driving
was taking place. I believe that retesting people at a certain age is
important because the longer that someone has had their license, the
more they may forget some of the basics of safe driving. For example,
people above the age of 60 should be retested to make sure they still
have the ability to drive safely and not endanger others. In the area
that I live in, many elderly people seem to have a harder time
driving and put the lives of those that are safe drivers at risk.
From my own experience, I was nearly in a car accident that was
almost caused by an older woman not paying attention to the road. I
was on my way to work and driving in a residential area with my dad
when this older woman came barreling out of her driveway without even
looking. My dad was laying on the horn to alert this woman that there
was another vehicle and she stopped with inches to spare. Had my dad
not swerved his vehicle out of the way to avoid this accident, I do
not know what would have happened to myself or my dad. Another way
that my mind saw this near accident of being much worse was if there
was a vehicle on the other side of the road and my dad not being able
to swerve out of the way. The woman barreling out of her driveway
would have slammed into the passenger’s side of the truck and I
could have been severely injured or worse. For someone to just pull
out of their driveway without looking and being cautious is
mindboggling to me. That is one reason as to why retesting people
come a certain age is something that should be looked into further by
state and federal governments. However, something that I believe that
I can do while I am driving to be a safer driver is to pay attention
to cross walks as sometimes it is hard to see whether or not there
are pedestrians crossing or not. I have had a couple close calls that
have put me on edge. This ended up causing me to not drive for a
short period of time because I was scared it would happen again.