Drive Safe

Drive Safe

By: Ryleigh Felty

Drive safe, something parents tell their kids every time they get behind the wheel. Something we should always be doing whenever we’re on the road. Not just for your own safety, but for the safety of others. Whether it be the passengers in your own vehicle or other drivers on the road. Sadly not everyone is safe, and accidents happen because not everyone is educated on how to drive safely. This is because not everyone has taken a drivers ed course.

Drivers ed is extremely important in educating young drivers the rules of the road, and molding them into safe drivers. If drivers ed was required to be taught in every school across the country, we would have a generation of significantly safer drivers. This is because they would be more educated, in the ways of safe driving. When families go to insure their teenager, insurance rates are significantly lower, if the teen has taken drivers ed, than if they have not. This is because the insurance companies are aware of the fact that teens that take drivers ed tend to be safer drivers. Insurance companies also give out discounts to safe drivers who don’t get into accidents. Now if we had safer drivers on the road we would have fewer accidents.

Sadly car accidents happen all the time. I have never personally been in a car accident, but I have seen a few. One particular one that has always stuck with me happened about a little over a year ago. My mom was driving me to school, and there was more traffic than normal that day. We were in the turning lane as someone from the left lane, cut across the turning lane right in front of us. Now this person must not have been paying attention, cause he cut right across the right lane, and got smacked right by a pickup truck. He ended up pointing in the wrong direction, because of the sheer force of the hit. It was crazy. I learned from that accident, that whenever you are turning, you pay extreme attention to the flow of traffic. I feel that seeing that accident, has helped me be a safer driver because I have seen what can happen if your not paying attention.

Everyone thinks that they’re a great driver, one for the record books, but that sadly isn’t true in all cases. Some steps I could personally take to be a safer driver is to start braking earlier at traffic lights, stop signs, and yield signs. I feel that doing this would not only ensure the safety of myself but my passengers. It would also help my brakes out. To help others be safer on the road, I would make sure that I turn off my high beam lights at night when passing another vehicle. That way everyone can stay safe, and see the road in front of them.

Safe driving is extremely important, drivers ed is a major step in creating safe drivers, also learning from mistakes that happen, and just keeping ourselves in check. If all drivers did theses things, America would have safer roads. There would be fewer fatal accidents, and more safe driving all around.