In the Blink of an Eye

In the Blink of an Eye

So much can happen in an instant. Until that moment comes, you never thought it could be you. That’s what the general mentality regarding car crashes is: “It won’t happen to me.” However, having that mindset only endangers your life more—you decide to go ahead and send that text, fiddle with the radio, or look over at your friends. You suddenly hear tires screeching, a loud boom, and scratchy sounds of metal colliding. The worst part about it is that you don’t entirely understand how you got there. What do you do now?

Drivers, especially new ones, need to be properly informed on just how important it is to not be distracted whilst driving. How little time is needed for an accident to occur needs to be emphasized: just a few seconds with their eyes off the road. If these seconds make the difference between life-and-death, new drivers need to be encouraged to listen to warnings about taking their attention away from driving. From personal experience, a person texting whilst driving forever changed my viewpoint, it is now much more important to me to emphasize just how harmful one small screen can be. I was paying attention to the road—all it took was one other person looking down to cause a crash that would engrave itself into my memory.

The only way to ensure that new drivers receive this information is to have structured education for not only traffic laws, but consequences that come with actions of the drivers themselves. Students need to see/hear for themselves the drastic effects that distraction can cause, either through survivors of these accidents or through witnesses of them. Additionally, drivers should have thorough instruction on what to do if an accident does occur and methods to keep calm if they find themselves in the midst of a crash. If drivers are informed of exact causes for a majority of car crashes, they might be persuaded to steer away from these risky behaviors.

Now, more than ever, this point needs to be made clearly and meaningfully. Yes, follow traffic rules: acknowledge the speed limit, use turn signals, but always watch other drivers’ driving and maintain caution. Keep yourself and those around you safe in the simplest, but most effective way: be informed, be alert, and don’t allow yourself to be occupied with anything other than driving. Don’t lose the rest of your life, or cause someone else’s to end, to do something that takes less than a minute, it is not worth it.