Name: Lainey Marie Allemand-Riles
From: Pullman, WA
Votes: 0
The
Tragic Truth About Driving
When
I was 9 years old, I got a call from my best friend in the middle of
the night. She told me that her older brother had just gotten in a
car accident. He hit a telephone pole and was thrown through his
windshield. He had to be airlifted to a hospital a couple hours away
and they were worried he would not make it. My friend’s brother,
Jonathan, was hospitalized for weeks suffering from brain bleeding
and broken bones. Thankfully, he did fully recover after a couple
months. However, about a year later, my cousin, Colby, was in fatal
car accident with two of his friends. They were driving on a dirt
road in the middle of nowhere and the driver flipped the car. The
driver and Colby, who was in the backseat, both lost their lives that
night, and the girl in the passenger seat lived. For all three of
them, this car accident happened the summer going into their senior
year. It was devastating not only to my family, but to the community.
Two young and innocent lives were lost that day.
These
examples are exactly why I take driving safely so seriously. One of
the ways I prioritize safe driving is by staying off of my phone.
When I get in the car, I put my phone in the glove box and do not
touch it until my car is stopped at its destination. I think that
young adults being on their phones is one of the biggest reasons for
such a high rate of driving related deaths in the country. If more
teens and adults payed more attention to the road, and less to their
phones, everyone would be a whole lot safer. Not to mention, if more
people took the couple seconds to put on their seatbelt, so many more
lives would be saved. I believe that if more people stayed off their
phone and simply wore their seatbelt, an abundance of these deaths
related driving would not occur.
I
do believe that the number of deaths related to driving would
skyrocket without drivers ed. Could teens learn from their
parents, aunts, uncles, or grandparents? Yes, but who knows how safe
that really would be. Not everyone follows every law and regulation
set buy their state, so teens would be bound to develop bad habits.
Drivers ed allows all teenagers to be taught the same rules and
regulations which provides the most safety for everyone. Although the
number of deaths relating to driving is large, it would be much worse
without drivers ed. Drivers ed teaches so many valuable
lessons and consequences that teenagers would not know if they did
not have to go through it.
