In The Driver’s Seat

In The Driver’s Seat

A good amount of my life was spent being raised in the Philippines. Stop lights and road signs are essentially non-existent over there, over crowded traffic just goes where it wants whatever way it wants most of the time. Driver’s tests are not required to get a license. Quite ironically though, the percentage of car accidents are less likely over there even with the lack of law enforcement to keep everything intact. We take advantage of the accommodations that are made for us. In my opinion, there’s a direct correlation between the number of deaths caused by driving and driver education. Learning to start a car and hit the gas is quite easy but to be able to coincide with other cars on the road is when education becomes a necessity.

There’s been a fair share of occasions where I’ve been in a car with very irresponsible drivers and one case with me simply being in the wrong car at the wrong time. About a year ago, I was working for this solar company doing door-to-door. Going into our next stop, it was a nice sunny day with a full van of people just having small talk. A truck in front of us looked like they were doing a delivery for a bunch of lumber posts. These posts weren’t tied down properly and one of them flew back straight to our windshield. We were saved by the post partially hitting the metal frame otherwise it would have just gone straight in the passenger’s seat. It was a very thoughtless act not to tie down those posts and could have caused irreversible damage.

We sometimes forget how many benefits we get by living where we are and often take that for granted. Many things could be done to reduce fatality caused by driving. Stricter laws could be inflicted, more roadside police officers could be placed. But honestly a really big step is just emphasizing the importance of why certain laws are what they are as a community, driving drunk for one. An enormous percentage of death on the road is caused by a person deciding to sit behind the wheel after a few too many beers. It’s 2020, take an Uber! Personally I was too scared to start driving. I held it off until the very last moment I could. One step I always keep in mind is to take into account myself, the people in my car, and the people in the cars next to me. I hope this would set a good example for everyone who steps foot in my car and it just causes a domino effect.