Safe Driving for New Drivers

I never appreciated how dangerous driving was until I first began driving. Two years ago, I got my learner’s permit and began driving with a parent by my side. While it was very stressful, I knew that my parent would let me know if I made a mistake and how to correct it. My parents also taught me how to drive safely and what to do to reduce risks. My school also helped to educate me on driving through statistics about the dangers of teenage driving and how to avoid becoming a part of those statistics. One year ago, I got my driver’s license and I was sure of myself that I wouldn’t make those mistakes. I mention this because there are plenty of teenagers who don’t get this guidance or who intentionally ignore it, which causes them to be a statistic. My biggest while driving is phones and passengers.
Even with strict legislation against phone use while driving, it is still a big distraction among teenagers and adults alike. Since phones are a crucial part of communication nowadays, not answering a text or a phone call immediately may come off as rude to the other person. This causes a Catch-22 of sorts. They can respond to the text but they would be breaking the law and could potentially cause harm to themselves or others. On the other hand, they could respond later while driving safely and risk the other person being upset that they had to wait for a response. It doesn’t matter which one they choose, in their mind, they would be in the wrong somehow even though the safest and legal option would be to wait until they are not operating a vehicle to respond to the text. Even thinking about this choice can cause distracted driving by focusing on which choice to pick, rather than what’s on the road. My solution is to turn my phone onto Do Not Disturb so that I wouldn’t even receive a notification that someone is trying to contact me
while driving. In some phone models, when you turn on Do Not Disturb and someone tries to contact you, it will automatically send them a text that you are driving at the moment. This solves the problem of the other person potentially getting made about receiving a late text.
Passengers are a major distractor to teenagers. Whether the passenger is a parent or a friend, they could all cause distractions in their own way. Parents can be distractors by being a “backseat driver” which can cause the teenage driver to become frustrated and lose concentration on the road. Friends can become distractors by not respecting the teenage driver. Friends of the teenage driver could abuse their friendship by touching the driver or messing with the dashboard of the car. These friends may not even realize that they are being distracting because, in other situations, stuff like this would be okay. In all cases of passenger distraction, the most dangerous one is conversation. While any noise can be a distraction, conversation while driving is so dangerous because it could change at any moment, and with that, the driver’s emotions can change with the conversation. For example, a conversation can turn from talking about puppies and kittens to talking about any form of controversial issue, causing the conversation to become heated. This in turn causes the driver to become more focused on the topic at hand rather than driving. My solution to parent and friend distractions is to first tell the passenger to stop what they are doing and explain that it is distracting you. If they continue their behavior, pull over, tell them to get out, and arrange a way for them to get home.
I had to learn the dangers of passengers first hand and it could have ended in disaster. One of the rules in my car is to not talk to me in high-risk scenarios such as unlit roads or while it’s raining. Not only would this particular passenger not follow this rule, but they would intentionally cause fights with me to get me upset. This would cause me to not only drive with an external risk of the weather but the internal risk with my mental space no longer being focused on the road. What finally broke me was when their disrespect got me in trouble. I was driving them home at night in the rain from their work. They decided to unload their emotional baggage onto me while I was driving. I asked them to wait until we got home and if they could please let me focus. They ignored me and continued to complain about their workday. I was getting frustrated with their behavior and lost focus of the road. I went to take a right at a traffic light and they began to yell at me for ignoring them. This caused me to become so startled that I didn’t stop in time for the red light and accidentally ran through it. Luckily, no one was hurt but it did result in me getting a ticket.
While it was my fault for losing control of my vehicle, it never would have happened if the passengers would have followed the rules I set in place. I am no longer friends with these people since they have shown no respect to me or my vehicle. I also no longer give rides for risk that another situation like what happened with the red light. Ever since I have cut off giving free rides, driving has become a lot less stressful and I haven’t made a mistake since.
There are many solutions to these distractors but these are the ones that I believe are the most efficient. The more experience I gain while driving, the more solutions I will find to these distractors. At the center though, it is the teenage driver’s choice to do the safest and legal option in any scenario. It is also the parent’s and schools’ responsibility to educate them on the safe and legal options are to combat these distractors. I believe that if these two things are taken
seriously by the teenagers, parents, and the schools, the statistic of how many teenagers drive distracted will go down.