Unsafe at Any Speed

May of 2019, mid-day, I was riding in the back of a MedStar ambulance. It was the second day of my five-day residency to become an EMT basic. I was leaving the scene of a simple fender bender where I merely had to check vitals and write a report. This was a normal call, the kind I saw all the time as a volunteer firefighter. As we left the scene, the two paramedics I was with got a call for another accident. I was excited, naively thinking that this was my chance for excitement. I eagerly jumped in the back of the cab. We drove to the outskirts of our very wide jurisdiction. Half way to the wreck, the two paramedics yelled to the back “have you ever been to a wreck where there was a dead body?” My heart sunk into my boots, “no” I answered passively. We arrived on scene to a car that was half up a tree facing the road. A little boy age ten was laying on a stretcher hugging his stuffed Pokémon. I was relieved to find that the boy looked healthy and content. When I got out of the cab one of the paramedics ordered me to check on the occupants of the SUV. I ran to the car, only to be stopped in my tracks at an image I can never forget. The two men in the car, one in the backseat and the other at the driver’s wheel were dead. Neither of the two men were wearing seatbelts and their faces were covered in blood from the impact of the crash. The only survivor was the ten-year-old kid who was sitting in the front seat wearing his seatbelt. I can still hear the small child asking me where his grandfather was. This scene that I witnessed in my training as an EMT is just one of the many sad events that occur because seatbelts are sparingly used and distracted driving is rampant. It is estimated that more than 46,000 individuals die every year due to fatal car crashes. The number of vehicle deaths can be decreased through safe driving education, ones that emphasizes the main causes of vehicle deaths, such as erratic driving, and how such incidents can be mitigated.

The advent of phones has increased distracted driving exponentially. Drivers today fail to grasp that in the five seconds it takes them to check a text message, they have driven a football field worth of distance; this combined with a lack of seatbelts is a deadly combination. The age of Social media has created a new age of distracted driving. Driving was distracting enough when your friend was constantly texting you; now individuals get fifteen notifications on their phone when their cousin’s roommate changed his profile picture. Fortunately, due to modern driver education initiatives, drivers are beginning to learn about the dangers of distractive driving. Driving related deaths, have actually declined in the last thirty years; nearly 10,000 less people died in 2019 then died in 1989 due to accidents. These statistics prove that driver education is the best way to combat erratic driving.

Despite the improvement in safe driving education one death is too many. As scary as it seems, I believe that stories like the one I told in the beginning should be utilized more in driver education. Fear is a strong motivator for people to change their behavior. With the right advertising, people will ask; is my life worth that text? Or worth the life of a child? Advertisements can display the life of a child from preschool to successful adulthood and then pull the rug out and say “this is the life that Jane would have lived. . . Don’t text and drive!”

America is experiencing an epidemic of vehicle related deaths that have claimed more lives than both the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan combined. The truth is that these deaths should be far easier to fix than either of these geopolitical conflicts. The emphasis of the safe driving education should focus upon how some easy changes can save countless lives. Put your seatbelt on; it will save your life. Put your phone down, no text message is worth the irremediable damage you could cause. Unfortunately, the easiest changes are often the hardest to implement. Despite the warnings I give my family, my mother still refuses to consistently wear a seatbelt and my sister somehow drives with a phone in one hand and a coffee in the other. To the average citizen, car crashes are a distant thought; something that happens to others. Most people hold the arrogant belief that they are above driver education. These individuals believe that lessons on safe driving are for people that are less experienced behind the wheel and rules against texting and driving are for people who are not as good at multitasking. In fact, many accidents are caused by overconfident and “experienced” drivers who pay no attention to how they drive. To ensure that such knowledgeable motorists are not the cause of accidents, safe driving education should be a part of states driver’s license renewals. When a person’s license is about to expire, they would be required to do a hour long safety video online, before having their license renewed. Most companies and state jobs require their employees to periodically do continuing education in that field, why not do the same to save lives on the road.

Drive safe. . . save lives. . . vroom vroom