Improving Driving to Save Lives

Improving Driving to Save Lives

By Ashling Bourke

Drivers must be educated and comfortable driving, as it decreases the likelihood of car accidents and driving-related deaths. Driver’s education programs are the best way to avoid deaths related to driving and can be significantly improved. Schools can also encourage their students to be safe drivers, creating good habits that start early. I have worked to become a safer driver through enabling features on my phone that discourage distracted driving. Overall, many ways driving-related deaths can be reduced can be done by both individuals and community-wide efforts.

Driver’s education programs are vitally important to reducing the number of driving-related deaths. These programs are essential because they teach the fundamentals of driving, such as the rules of the road and traffic flow. These skills ensure that all drivers have a common concept of how to drive, and the standards of driving are, ensuring that fewer accidents occur based on a lack of prior knowledge. However, current programs need to be more comprehensive to prepare novice drivers for the road better. This is because many programs currently solely teach the rules of the road and traffic flow, missing other fundamental topics such as operating the vehicle, driving in hazardous conditions, and dealing with hazards while driving. These are all crucial skills that drivers face daily, and by not teaching novice drivers how to deal with them, they are set up to fail. Implementing a more comprehensive program will ensure that novice drivers can handle a multitude of situations to feel confident behind the wheel. This confidence is key, as being nervous or hesitant behind the wheel can be life-threatening as drivers are unable to act promptly in order to make it out of a situation alive.

Reckless driving among young drivers can be prevented through a more comprehensive education programs that will instill good driving habits in teenagers from the start. Their knowledge of what to do is enforced in the classroom by the severity of driving recklessly. Many teenagers do not understand the risk they place on their lives when they are recklessly driving, so showing them what can happen may scare them into not driving recklessly, or at least impress upon them the severity of possible outcomes. Simulations and videos of reckless driving going wrong shown during driver’s education programs will instill the seriousness of driving recklessly. This can help to stop reckless driving as teenagers begin to form habits; their recent education will remind them of why they shouldn’t be carelessly driving.

Additionally, some cars now come with a ‘kid key’ feature, and when this key is used, the vehicle will have a set speed limit, ensuring that the driver can not go above the speed limit. As this feature becomes more widely available, parents should use it with their teenagers, as it forces them to make good habits and keeps them from speeding. Preventing reckless driving among young drivers ensures that they and future generations stop risking their lives behind the wheel.

Additionally, distracted driving is a great threat to drivers of all ages, especially teenagers, as social media and phones progress to become more addicting. To stop distractions related to accidents and deaths, there should be widespread implementation of a feature like Apple’s “Do Not Disturb While Driving.” This feature, when enabled, mutes all notifications when the phone is in motion and locks the phone until the user certifies that they are not driving. This feature takes away all compulsions to check one’s phone while driving and ensures that distracted driving will not occur. Implementing this on additional brands of phones will enable more widespread use of the feature, as well as instituting similar features on social media platforms such as Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, Facebook, VSCO, WhatsApp, and school-related applications. This makes the phone hard to use and efficiently takes away a teenager’s draw to their phone as a result. It will be one of the most effective ways to reduce distracted driving because it eliminates phones as a distraction. While obviously, not everyone will use this feature on the apps, having the option available to teens will influence a decision not to use their phones while driving. This is a significant step that can be taken towards being a safer driver, and I have implemented this feature on my phone in order to take away any compulsions I may have to check my phone.

Another thing I can do to create a safe driving community is to push for my school to hold an assembly as a PSA for safe driving. Having a school-wide assembly and PSA about features such as Apple’s “Do Not Disturb While Driving” will spread awareness of it. The PSA will show not just how to enable the do not open and disturb while driving features, but also why they should be enabled. The presentation should end with a personal story of how distracted driving is hazardous and ended a life. Ending the presentation this way uses ethos to pull on the audience’s pathos, while the first past is mainly a logos based appeal. This emotional ending empowers the audience to change and not end up like the story they just heard. After watching the PSA, schools should allow their students to sign a pledge saying they will use these features. Peer pressure is a useful tactic in engaging teens in using these features, as the presentation impacts their emotions, as do their peers. This peer pressure will make more teens enable the feature, so even if they initially did not want to enable the feature, they will have it enabled on their phones. Having a school-wide PSA on distracted driving reinforces the students on the dangers of distracted driving and how they can actively ensure they do not participate. This effectively stops their habits because seeing horrific outcomes will scare teenagers into better driving habits, reminding them that there are risks to driving distracted.

As I began to drive, I realized that my parents would only let me go during the day in perfect conditions on local roads. I began to realize that I never learned how to drive in any state other than the best-case scenario. I found this scary and dangerous as I did not know how to drive in any hazardous condition. So, I took the initiative to ask my parents to let me drive (with them in the car) in dangerous conditions such as snow, rain, fog, and nighttime, so I could safely learn how to tackle these situations with the help of my parents. Having an experienced driver in the vehicle during hazardous conditions is crucial to safety as they are experienced and can handle them, avoiding accidents. I now tell my friends that are beginning to drive to ask their parents if they can drive in different weather, so they will have the experience to handle anything when they are going by themselves.

Thankfully, I have never been in a car accident or been in a car where the driver acted irresponsibly. Taking additional actions, like being a defensive driver, ensures that everyone on the road stays alive and makes it to their destination safe and sound. The steps I have takenand will continue to take will empower me to be a safe and responsible driver throughout my life.