It Hits Close to Home

I am a farm kid and
both my parents were farm kids. I have grown up in a small town where
seat belts are not enforced, and kids ride in the backs of trucks
with no repercussions. We farm kids consider ourselves rough and
tough. Those city kids who have not driven before they are 14, well
they are “green” and soft. It is a well-known “secret” that
most of us farm kids start driving before we can even reach the
pedals properly. We do not go to drivers ed because we
think we need it; rather, we go because it is a requirement. We zone
out during the lectures and lessons, get behind the wheel, do the
driving, and subsequently study the material we missed during class
the night before our driver’s permit test.

Having grown up
with our farming community’s mindset, I see both sides of the
picture. For rural farming communities, in a way it is a sense of
pride that we feel we do not need someone to tell us how to drive. We
learn young, and that is just how it is. On the other hand, however,
I do see why drivers ed is so important. Our small town has
it wrong. Drivers ed is not really telling us how to drive
in terms of all the things we are doing wrong; rather, it is telling
us how to drive safely for both those in our vehicles and
others on the roadways. Drivers ed teaches many things that
keep drivers from having fatal accidents: when it is safe to pass,
how to parallel park, and how many feet should remain between two
cars to avoid tailgating just to name a few. These things are the
more unfamiliar aspects of driving that, in order to prevent
accidents, should not be learned by driving alone or at the very
least not being taught or informed the correct way. It is with a
heavy heart that I share why I believe this.

A
few of my classmates rode to school together every day. On one
particular morning it was quite foggy. The passengers did not feel
the need for seat belts, after all, this is a small town. To make
matters worse, the driver decided to keep his headlights off when
pulling onto the main highway. The intersection is a dangerous one in
the first place as it is nestled on the perfect part of a curve that
makes one side a blind intersection. Their car was hit by another
driver who could not see them due to lack of headlights in the fog. I
was in eighth grade at the time. Our middle school principal brought
us into an empty classroom, and told us that some kids from school
had a wreck. He specifically pulled one of my classmates out into the
hallway. A couple minutes later, we all heard him burst into tears.
My heart dropped. His brother was the driver, his brother’s
girlfriend and her sister were the passengers. The brother and his
girlfriend made it out alive. The sister, who was a senior and only
two short months away from graduation, was not so lucky.

Last
summer, three of my best friends decided to take a drive to a town
about 20 minutes from where we live. The roads going into this town
are dangerous, as they not only curve and wind, but they also have
dangerous truckers that take these roads. The girl driving did not
even have her license at the time, and the two passengers were not
wearing seat belts. They met a truck who was over the median on these
curves. The driver of the car got scared, swerved, and drove off the
road. Then, the car rolled twice into the ditch. The girl driving
came out with some scratches, the front seat passenger was admitted
to the hospital overnight for observation; however, the backseat
passenger was in critical condition that night and she spent the next
four months in the hospital undergoing numerous surgeries, missing
the first month of school.

I
share all my information for two important reasons: In the first
story I told, the driver was a farm kid just like me who had been
driving since he was ten. In his case, he did not pay attention in
drivers ed to the important rules about driving in foggy
conditions. In both of these stories, the passengers did not see the
need for a seatbelt, which ultimately led to their catastrophic
outcomes.

Many
kids who attend drivers ed come back to talk about the
boring subjects and all the specific rules about how many feet from a
crosswalk to stop. Many of these rules are vital to the survival of
drivers and those around them, but due to the lack of zeal added to
these lessons, we tune them out. If drivers ed programs
added personal encounters like those I provided, it would bring the
emotion back into these classes and engrain the important points more
effectively. It is hard to abide by rules when we can not connect
them to real world experiences.

For
me and many people, the biggest step we can take to help prevent
these accidents and deaths is to simply buckle up. The fact that most
accidents occur close to home is very much a reality as my encounters
prove. Both of the accidents I described were within 20 miles of our
town and involved a fatality or injury due to lack of seat belt. We
can get tickets all day long for not wearing a seatbelt, but those
tickets do not prevent accidents. If we buckled up, and put emphasis
on making drivers ed more meaningful for the students, many
more loved ones would return home without a trip in an ambulance, or
in a hearse.