Name: Mindy Le
From: Lexington, Kentucky
Votes: 0
When
you start to approach the age of learning how to drive, your parents
and those who care about you continuously remind you of the dangers
of operating a vehicle. As a young teenager, you listen, but you
usually don’t think much of anything about it. Teenagers do not
fully grasp the concept of everything that they are putting at risk
the moment they step into the driver’s seat of a vehicle. For
example, their own life, the lives of the people riding in the car
with them, and everyone else that they are sharing the roads with.
According
to Driver Knowledge, the average number of car accidents in the U.S.
every year is 6 million. Also, more than 90 people die in car
accidents in the U.S. every single day. Every day, there is a news
report about someone dying or getting severely injured in a car
accident. Let’s be honest, when you see these kinds of things on
the news, you feel for the victims and their families, but other than
that you don’t put much thought into it. However, what if the news
report about the fatal car accident involved someone that you know?
On
the early morning of March 17th
of 2018, a 15-year-old girl was killed in a car accident. She lived
in a city just barely outside of mine. Many people in my town knew
her, we all hung out through mutual friends. She was a passenger in a
car that was speeding when the driver lost control and collided into
a tree. In the few hours that everyone heard the news, the entire
county as well as neighboring counties were heart broken. It brought
so much awareness to how everything can change with just one mistake.
Her death opened everyone’s eyes to how dangerous driving can be
and how much responsibility it takes.
Exactly
11 months after this tragedy, on the morning of February 17, 2019, 2
young brothers age 15 and 17, were killed in another car accident.
These two amazing boys attended a high school right here in my
hometown. Everyone knew them as the sweetest and silliest pair of
brothers. Once again, speeding was the leading factor in the cause of
this misfortune. This caused many to fear the thought of driving and
brought attention to what mistakes in a car can lead to.
The
deaths of these 3 wonderful people struck the city. In these two
cases, the cause was speeding, but there are other factors that can
lead to accidents just like these. Distractions cause by a phone,
driving under the influence, reckless driving, and not following
traffic laws could do the same amount of damage or worse.
I believe that everyone seeking a
driver’s license should take a Drivers ed course and take
it seriously. Everyone should know how to properly operate a car and
the effects of making errors. It is so crucial to understand how easy
it is to put another person’s life in danger.
