Educate the Future

On March 19, 2022, a driver under the influence hit and killed a high school senior in Fresno, California. The reckless driver survived and will spend time in jail for felony DUI and gross vehicular manslaughter. This particular driver had been convicted of DUI twice before, once in 2018 and again in 2019. Once may be an accident, but twice is a serious problem.

One-hundred thousand drivers will be arrested for a DUI every year in California, and 35% will re-offend. Consequently, re-offenders are 4.1 times more likely to get into fatal crashes. Considering that 2 in 3 people will be involved in a DUI-related incident, reducing the number of these dangerous drivers should be a top priority. The best thing to do is decrease the number of first-time offenders so that the number of re-offenders will decline in the long run.

There’s a long list of punishments a driver could receive alongside their DUI: Jail time, higher insurance, DUI school, fines, a suspended license, probation, and a stained permanent record for all employers to see. With all these deterrents, one would think that DUIs would not be such a problem. However, in reality, punishment does little to address the cause of the behavior. If we want to stop DUIs before they start, we must educate the youth.

Simply telling young adults to make sure they have a designated driver or take an Uber is not effective unless they understand why and how it pertains to them. By the time these drivers finally empathize with and understand the severity of the situation, it may be too late to try to change the behavior. Therefore, I am proposing a solution that requires us to provide mandatory DUI courses to youth across the state of California. Education and accountability start in the classroom. If you know better, you do better.

The top three reasons for impaired driving are impaired judgment, peer pressure, and a false sense of security. Over 50% of people feel that they can drive after drinking because they underestimate how impaired they truly are. I suggest that children in high school through age 25 take a DUI course once a year. By enforcing the message as early as fourteen, we can teach them about the dangers of being a drunk driver and of being on the road with a drunk driver. By the time they turn 21 and can legally drink, the message will have been instilled; “If I have had anything to drink, I will not get behind the wheel. Even if I think I’m okay to drive, I am not.”

Peer pressure could also be addressed in the classroom. Students can engage in role-play activities, reenacting relevant scenarios and demonstrating what they would do and why. Later on, when young adults find themselves in a real-life situation, they will know what to do. This could lead to a herd mentality, proven to increase vigilance and cooperation while decreasing the negative influences that would cause drivers to show off for their friends.

A classroom’s learning environment can also address a false sense of security. Having a false sense of security means that you believe there will be no consequences for your actions. “I won’t be caught; I won’t crash; the drive isn’t even that far.” Part of the curriculum will require the youth to meet at least two survivors of DUI-related crashes. The first survivor, a crash victim, can teach students the consequences of reckless driving for themselves and others: listening and asking questions can develop a sense of empathy and solemnity. The second survivor will be a perpetrator. This person also believed there would be no consequences, but they were wrong. Now they must live with regret over the pain they have caused and encourage others not to make the same mistake. This person proves that even when you are confident you could get away with driving recklessly, even when you have done this kind of thing before, it can still catch up to you.

The classroom is an environment where you can have these healthy discussions and learn from one another. We as a society can take advantage of this and instill positive messages while the drivers are young and willing. If we wait until after the accident or arrest, we may not be able to get through to them. Let us advocate for mandatory DUI courses to be taught before the crash, to children long before they get behind the wheel, and long after they have started drinking so that when the time comes, they will be ready, and we will be safe.