The Need for Defensive Driving

The Need for Defensive Driving

Driving a car is seen as both a big responsibility in life, and a massive milestone for a teenager. Drivers’ education programs are designed to help teenagers learn the basics of driving, how read traffic signals, street signs, road markings, and obey the laws of the road. The book won’t stop your heart when you’re too close, your attention has drifted, or you are confronted with a situation in the moment that requires you to make a driving decision. What is book-learned must be reinforced with parking lot and road time. Drivers’ education must go beyond book learning to be effective at reducing the number of deaths as a result of teen driving.

Drivers, and particularly new drivers without experience in a wide variety of driving and driving-impacted weather situations, need to know how to combat another drivers’ bad tendencies that put everyone at risk. This was personal for me. I’ve been in a near death experience with a semi-truck almost hitting me from their side. I live 30 minutes from my summer job. When driving home one night, I was headed south on I-275, a five-lane freeway as it approaches M-14, a state east-west freeway. I was in the right most lane, about to the exit for M-14, when out of my side vision, a large semi travelling at least 70 miles an hour crossed from the far-left lane, across the small grass median, into the exit lane – and almost hit me. I had a car behind me, which didn’t allow me to brake, or we both would have been hit. I moved ahead enough to clear the front of the truck, placing the semi behind me, as he slowed down to make the exit curve. My heart was in my throat. I was only thankful that my attention was not just in front of me, but on the larger landscape to notice the threat. Youth drivers may never get this heart rendering experience, but they need to take their driving skills to a defensive driving level to reduce the number of deaths related to driving. Drivers that are successful at defensive driving demonstrate high attention during the driving experience.

Drivers’ education should not just list the statistics on how many people die at the wheel or are seriously injured, but show new driver’s techniques on how to keep this from happening. In addition to learning in the classroom, driver’s education programs should use driving simulators to provide a simulated real-time driving experience testing defensive driving skills, or use videos or 1^st hand testimony from impacted persons to show new drivers how to avoid an oncoming collision, the dangers of driving and texting, and the dangers of driving on the road while intoxicated. The numbers of driver-related deaths could be decreased if either of these approaches were taken. It can be as simple as showing a teen a video someone their age that is paralyzed from the neck down or who suffered third degree burns from a crash that will instill the seriousness of driving alert and safe. Defensive driving is a great teacher for all driving situations – leaving yourself options is a driving skill more teenagers need to learn and practice.

I’ve experienced non-moving car accidents, involving my ability to successfully execute a 3-point turn backing out of a driveway; and pulling out of a parking space at school next to a light pole with a large cement base. This told me that my skills at understanding the space around my vehicle and the allowances I need to make needed to improve. I became much better at backing out using a 3-point turn because I parked outside of our side-entry garage. Our driveway is about 300 feet long. I would pull my car up to near the garage, and do a 3-point turn to turn myself around to head out for school the next morning. When my grandfather, who lived with us, moved to Florida in the fall, I earned a garage parking space. I am very careful about not dragging the side of the car along the garage door frame, and have had no further incidents with that. Good driving takes practice, and if you or your parents or teachers identify deficits, it helps to have targeted practice to master those driving skills.

I personally believe that if drivers education programs touched on those topics then fewer driving deaths and accidents would occur. With that being said, I have been in situations of near car crashes resulting from my friends taking their eyes off the road to look at the radio or change the song on their phone. Driving can seem to be a gift to teenagers at first, as it is the first time that they don’t need their parents to drive them. Showing teenagers the ways to combat a bad driver on the road or a possible accident waiting to happen, shouldn’t be approached by listing off statistics, but showing teenagers how to notice a developing situation and avoid it; or what steps to take if you find yourself in the middle of it so you’ll not become the next statistic..