Name: Taylor Matthew Stagner
From: Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
Votes: 4
I was about six years–old the first time I felt the warm leather of a steering wheel. My dad sat me in his lap while he worked the pedals, and I steered the ship while we drove a circle around the yard. Looking back now, it seems like a small task. But at the time, I felt like I was the king of the highway. I did not realize at the time that I was developing driving skills to help me later in life, I was just having fun! Dad would instruct me to move the vehicle to one area of the yard, and I would navigate through the trees and around the swing set. As I got a little older, I was able to drive the truck by myself around the farm while logging wood. I learned how the breaks and gas pedals worked and how the truck reacted going up and down hills.
Most schools in my area did not offer driving safety courses. For most students in my high school, the first time behind the wheel of a vehicle was pulling out of the Department of Motor Vehicles parking lot after passing their written assessment for their learner’s permit. My generation was one of the first to be tempted with texting while driving. Having never being taught the dangers of it, it spread like a plague amongst teenagers. Seatbelt laws had only become enforceable in Tennessee in 2004 and had only been in effect around five years before my graduating class received our licenses, so we were not too keen on adhering to them yet. Driver education is important for the safety of those who travel by driving a motor vehicle.
The Importance of Driver Education.
I am a firm believer that driver education courses should be taught to students as they enter high school, but that is not always the case. In many schools, budget cuts are requiring public schools to remove driver education courses from their curriculum (NBC, 2009). This can cause inexperienced drivers to make simple mistakes due to a lack of knowledge of how to operate a vehicle. Young drivers will also be nervous and react negatively to situations that can occur on the road. Sending inexperienced young teens to drive on the roads can be dangerous and even result in unnecessary loss of life.
Texting while driving.
Before the millennial generation, cell phones were not a common item that many people carried around with them. Today, almost every teenager has a smartphone. The convenience of texting over talking made texting the preferred method of communication. In 2019, distracted driving claimed the lives of 3,142 people (NHTSA, n.d.). Thinking back on my own experiences, we lost six high school aged teens between the years 2008 and 2012 in the surround areas of my home town. With appropriate education about safe driving being taught at public schools, I believe these accidents could have been avoided.
Lack of education about laws pertaining to driving.
In the state of Tennessee, seat belt laws became effective on April 21, 1986, however they were not enforced until July 1, 2004. (CDC, 2015). The Tennessee Highway Safety Office has safety laws listed on its website (Tennessee Traffic Safety Resource Service, n.d.). However, none of this information is being taught in public schools. Without drivers’ education courses, the knowledge of basic safety features on a vehicle goes untaught to teens who are about to take on the world behind the wheel of a car.
How to promote safe driving habits.
While there are programs teaching safe driving habits to teens, such as the click-it or ticket program in Tennessee (NHTSA, n.d.), The lack of driver education courses taught on the public-school level is concerning. Without properly educating teens on safe driving habits, we are setting them up for failure when we put them behind the wheel of a car. It is alarming that in this country, we are not taking driving education courses seriously. Drivers education courses are something I passionately believe should be reinstated into the public school systems.
References
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2015, December 2). Primary enforcement of seat belt laws. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. https://www.cdc.gov/motorvehiclesafety/calculator/factsheet/seatbelt.html.
Click it or ticket: Day and night. NHTSA. (n.d.). https://www.nhtsa.gov/click-it-or-ticket-day-and-night.
Distracted driving. NHTSA. (n.d.). https://www.nhtsa.gov/risky-driving/distracted-driving.
NBCUniversal News Group. (2009, December 19). Some schools drop driver’s ED to cut costs. NBCNews.com. https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna34483262.
Traffic safety laws. Traffic Safety Laws | Tennessee Traffic Safety Resource Service. (n.d.). https://tntrafficsafety.org/traffic-safety-laws.
