The Weight of the Driver’s Seat

It was five o’clock in the morning and the sun had yet to rise. My eyes were heavy as I drove along the freeway with my brother in the passenger seat, both of us shivering from the cold. My headlights cut through the darkness, the only other light being barely visible in the distance. I thought nothing of it – just a slower car I would have to go around eventually. I yawned and kept driving, but the lights began to come closer at an abnormal rate. Five hundred feet, four hundred, three… the lights were not moving. I realized it was a stopped car hurtling towards me and I started to brake. It came closer, I braked harder, but it kept coming. In a dreamy state of darkness and exhaustion, I slowed down but not enough, my fogginess of mind blurring my depth perception.

“Use the shoulder!” My brother called out. I snapped out of my murky state and jerked the wheel to the right, my bumper inches away from that of the other car. I sped past the stopped car and the darkness returned.

I will never forget that early morning. Although my brother and I were fortunate enough to avoid bodily injury, those thirty seconds continue to weigh heavily on my heart even to this day. Not only could I have been seriously harmed or even killed, but my brother could have as well. I, as the driver, held his life in my hands and only a few inches saved it. I should have been better.

This is why driver’s education is absolutely essential. I needed to learn when and how to brake hard and fast, and how to utilize the shoulder in times of need. Other drivers, especially ones with less experience on the road, must learn this too. Extensive practice is necessary in order to apply the material learned to real-world situations. It is one thing to comprehend that one must brake quickly in times of need, and another to know how to physically do so. What may be perceived as common knowledge can slip one’s mind in times of crisis, causing panic and confusion or even states of vacancy. Driver’s education must consist of more than the rules of the road and written lessons. Including real-life examples and scenarios in which students can practice and become familiar with techniques to avoid collisions will decrease the number of deaths related to driving. To educate is not simply to fill the mind with facts, but to inform and prepare one for the world. It is the responsibility of the administrators of drivers’ licenses to make sure those who receive them are fully prepared for any situation.

Driver’s education must also include lessons on the responsibility that a driver possesses. Whoever sits in the driver’s seat is responsible for all passengers in the car as well as other driver’s and passengers on the road. While this may seem obvious, I learned that the weight carried by the driver is felt much more acutely when inches away from colliding with another vehicle. It is only when you stand seconds away from death do you realize that the person sitting next to you does as well and that you alone have the ability to change it. Countless collisions, injuries, and deaths have been caused by careless driving. This is an embarrassing and sickening fact. To know that drivers have grown careless towards human life is to know that driver’s education must be amended. Apathy has no place on roads filled with invaluable individuals, whose lives can be taken all too easily.

The world is filled with drivers, passengers, pedestrians, and everyone in between. Each has value as a person and as a life, and this must be understood each time someone starts their engine. Driver’s education must be held accountable for teaching this and drivers for learning it. Rules and regulations do not express compassion and therefore are not sufficient in educating a driver whose every decision affects the lives around them. In order to practically teach the importance of recognizing the value of human life, real-life examples must be included in driver’s education curriculum. This teaches students how to practically avoid collisions and preserve the lives around them. Factual material must be taken from the paper, to the minds, and to the muscles of drivers, so that protecting others becomes second nature. The freedom that comes with being able to drive is glorious, but not at the expense of the lives of others.