The Positive Effects of Driver’s Education

Positive Effects of Driver’s Education

Driver’s education is an essential component of American society’s ability to reduce car accidents and promote safe driving. Knowledge of how a vehicle works and the rules of the road are essential to preventing misunderstandings and reckless actions among drivers. When I first started driving, I didn’t even know that a car moves automatically when the gas pedal isn’t physically pushed down. I would have been even more oblivious had I not spent the prior few weeks studying traffic laws and the basics of how vehicles function.

If I had to choose one thing that I learned in driver’s education to be most important, I would choose focusing on the road. There are countless advertisements and public service announcements about the dangers of texting and driving, but the core issue is really distraction. Texting requires an amount of attention that can’t safely be given while driving, which is why it’s one of the most dangerous things a driver can do. However, children in the back seat, typing into a GPS, putting on makeup, lighting a cigarette, and myriad other actions can also be distracting enough to cause a serious car accident. Under the worst circumstances, it can take only a fraction of a second for a driver to miss a pedestrian, an animal, an object, or another vehicle and end up in a life-threatening situation.

The second most important part of driver’s education, in my humble opinion, is how to drive in winter weather. I live in Michigan, which is a state that is snowy for most of the year. If you’ve never driven in snow, you may not know that the required stopping distance is greatly increased and speed must be decreased when the road is covered in snow and/or ice. My one and only car accident was in the snow. I was driving on a country road at 35 mph. The road was mostly cleared and salted, and there was little traffic around me; so I wasn’t as cognizant as I should have been about stopping distance. I suddenly came upon an “S-curve” that was not nearly as cleared of snow and ice as the previous road had been; I didn’t have time to slow down. I lost traction on the passenger side of my car and the car began to slide towards the guard rail on the side of the road. I managed to use what I had learned in driver’s training to react quickly; I counter-steered enough to keep my car from spinning into the guard rail. I was lucky enough to avoid the rail due to my training coupled with the decently large snow bank between the road and the unforgiving metal of the rail. I was literally only an inch from it when I got out of my car to check. If I had not learned to counter-steer in my driver’s training classes, I may not have been able to avoid a much more dangerous crash.