Thinking about Safe Driving

Nationwide, 1.35 million people die in car accidents each year. This averages to about 3,700 deaths a day. Besides those deaths, another 20-50 million people a year are injured or disabled because of a car crash (The Wandering RV) These numbers are insane. There are so many things that we could be doing to lower these numbers and help prevent vehicle related deaths and injuries. The best way to quickly and effectively do this is driver education. I know that this is already in place, but I think that there needs to be more of an emphasis on it. People in the United States are required to take driver’s education before getting their license, but why should that be the only time they take it? Road safety, the meanings of signs, general driving tips, and more things that are learned in driver’s education are super important to remember during one’s entire driving career, not just at the very beginning. I’ve had many discussions with my friends in which we all agree that people as a whole should be required to retake their driver’s test at certain ages. I think everyone would benefit from a refresher every 5-10 years after getting their license.

Although driver’s education is the most effective thing we can do to reduce to number of car accident deaths, there are other things we can do. One big thing is education regarding the use of smart phones and how detrimental it is to use one while driving. There are already a lot of programs in place to educate people (mostly teens) about this, but I still feel like we could do more. There could be apps installed on phones that literally do not allow the owner of the phone to use it while in motion. There could be more penalties for someone caught using their phone while driving. Another thing that can be done to reduce vehicular deaths is lower speed limits or enforce the speed limits a little better. People drive so fast everywhere they go. The speed limit might be 30 miles per hour, but there will always be people going at least 37 miles an hour, testing the speed limit and the enforcers of it. This situation is even worse on the freeway. With a speed limit of 70 miles per hour, some people go 90 miles per hour no problem. It’s harder to enforce the speed limit on the freeway because of the sheer amount of cars. There are more people that die on freeways than anywhere else because of the insane speed that some people go. When someone is driving super-fast, their reaction time and distance shrink a great amount. They may think that they can react fast enough, but almost no one ever does. I still feel like a higher rate of enforcement would help to significantly reduce the number of deaths in car accidents.

My dad is a good driver, but he gets distracted very easily. He also drives for most of his job, and in order to keep in contact with his boss and the patients he is seeing, he is on his phone a lot. I know that he tries to limit the use of his phone to while he is parked or even at a stop light, but there still have been times where I’ve been a little scared when he is driving. He likes to look at his phone at every notification he gets and does so while driving. He holds his phone in a way that he can look at the phone and the road pretty simultaneously, but it will still never be the same as just looking at the road. I’ve tried countless times to remind him that he doesn’t need to look at his phone while driving, but he still has yet to drop this bad habit. Some of my friends are also the same way, needing to look at their phone at every notification they get.

Personally, I need to work on my phone usage while I drive. I am not the kind of person to fully be on my phone, but I look at it often to change songs on Spotify while I am driving. More often than not, the song that I want to change doesn’t really need to be changed, but I am picky with my music and only like to listen to stuff that fits my mood. I’ve actually had some close calls with fender benders and super mild accidents because I briefly looked down at my phone to change the song. Another thing I need to work on is how fast I drive. I am one of those people that I talked about earlier: a driver that pushes the speed limit as much as I can. It’s one of my fatal flaws, and I know that I need to change it, or I could be in serious trouble someday.

Writing this small paper has been very good for me. It was enlightening to think about ways that we as a society could reduce deaths and injuries caused by car accidents, while also reflecting on my driving habits and the driving habits of the other people in my life.