Innocent Bystanders Gone Too Soon

On November 8, 2022, our close nit community in Northwest Indiana was viscously reminded of the fact that America’s roads are not safe. A twenty-four-year-old, second year teacher in our school corporation was sadly taken from all those who knew and loved her, as well as from all those lives she would have undoubtedly touched as a middle school English teacher when her life ended due to a senseless act of reckless and deadly driving. One would not think sitting and waiting for a red light to change to green on a typical, in-town roadway on a typically trafficked afternoon to be a dangerous task. However, it sadly was on that day, and this is sadly all too common in America. At twenty-four years of age, this teacher was not too far removed from her driver’s education years. The reckless driver, at age forty-two, wasn’t that far removed from that required education either. How much additional education is needed to prevent a driver driving nearly one hundred miles per hour on a street marked with a 45-mph limit? How much education is enough education? What type of driver’s education can be used to help get the message spread throughout our country to help curb these tragedies?

At seventeen years of age myself, I was very recently enrolled in driver’s education. The physical driver’s ed classroom building and the bureau of motor vehicles branch where I eventually and eagerly received my first operator’s license at age 16 were located no more than 2.5 miles away from the intersection where the teacher died. At driver’s ed, we read about safety, we read about rules, we read about facts involving the dangers of driving. We learned about different colors of road signs from hazards to informational. I do not really recall learning about the real human toll driving can have on people, families, or neighbors when driving becomes dangerous and deadly. I do recall learning about points on your record and monetary penalties if failing to follow the rules of the road. And of course, that your license can ultimately be revoked if you do not play by the rules and keep your record clean. Maybe it would be beneficial to put all new drivers through an “emotional wringer.” At least after the part we are taught that driving is a privilege and not a right.

The basic information currently taught is essential and necessary. We do need to know what the significance of sign colors and symbols represent, we need to learn how to merge onto a highway, and how to use and understand the different functions of our directionals, high-beams, hazard lights and so on. However, driver’s ed needs to incorporate that “emotional wringer.” Being the first, formal experience new driver’s encounter, I feel a whole new and required section devoted to reading, watching, and hearing actual real-life testimony from victims’ surviving family and friends as well as testimony of the perpetrators or perpetrators’ families, and the consequences these deadly accidents have on all involved would be very valuable teaching material. I believe it would be more powerful if these materials could be drawn from local areas near where the driver’s ed is taking place. So, while the students are learning about turn signals and what diamond shape street signs mean, there is a constant reminder being incorporated throughout the lessons of the awful results improper driving can have, and it’s perhaps closer than one may realize (“I know that street… that intersection…I knew kids from that school…my parents work where that victim was driving home from when the drunk driver ran that red light…”).

Of course, there are more ways the government can get involved in helping reduce the number of deaths related to driving, such as passing laws that prohibit holding a phone, for any reason, while driving, such as is the case in my home state of Indiana or moving over to the left when emergency vehicles are on the right shoulder or by increasing punitive measures for violators. But education is the building block of future success in any realm, including the area of driving responsibly. My mother and father both are required to go through continuing education every year to keep licenses or credentials associated with their jobs up to date, perhaps continuing education in driving can be required as well. Today, society has the technology to bring such continuing ed to peoples’ homes or to license branches. My parents have each been driving for over thirty-five years and ever since taking their first driver’s license photos, they haven’t had to crack a book or visit a website to make sure they still are understanding all rules of the road. Have any traffic laws changed in thirty-five years? How are seasoned drivers keeping up to date with changing laws related to driving? Moreover, it would also make sense to incorporate the “emotional wringer” educational aspect into any such continuing ed requirement.

Personally, I will take several steps to become a better and safer driver. First, I will reduce the volume of the radio while driving. The noise a car generates traveling at 100 mph on a basic 4 lane street must be loud and unique. In order to be a “defensive” driver, I will need to hear what is always going on around me. Second, I will always keep sunglasses in my car. I noticed that as seasons change, and the sun moves closer to the horizon in the fall and winter on my way home from school and work, it can be quite blinding without sunglasses. Third, I will encourage passengers to respect these rules. When people are in a group volume and activity increases, I will try to keep the music and conversation at low enough levels as to not be a distraction to the important task of driving safely; we can crank up the volume and laugh when we are safely parked. Fourth, if I need to use GPS for directions, I will first study the route so I’m familiar with the directions ahead of time and keep the phone’s Bluetooth on and the phone itself mounted. Finally, I will share stories such as the tragedy of this teacher any time I come across such news so I and others are always reminded of the importance of safe and defensive driving.

Two days ago, about 20 miles from my home in Crown Point, Indiana, one exit north of the exit I take for soccer practice, a driver was involved in a minor traffic accident, and for reasons unknown, fled that minor accident, sped onto the off ramp of I-65 South, going the wrong way, and drove head into an unexpecting driver traveling south. Both drivers were pronounced dead at the scene.