The importance of you.

When you’re fifteen years old sitting in a room with other teens the same age for hours on end learning about safe driving, you may not take it seriously. I know I didn’t, and looking back I now understand how important that class is to young adults. As a new driver, you feel so excited and free to be on your own and able to go wherever you want and whenever you want. However, it’s not just about you. According to “Driver Knowledge”, there is an average of six million car accidents per year. I think we can all agree that is way too many. So many of those wrecks could have been prevented by just paying attention, as silly as that may sound. Your life and others are incredibly more important than the song that is playing that you want to change, and that text can wait. Your life is so precious and can be taken away from you in an instant. This all means so much more to me recently as I was diagnosed with partial complex seizures. When my doctor called to tell me, he didn’t forget to mention how that meant no more driving for now. As a seventeen year old, I was devastated. I finally was feeling confident and preparing myself for adulthood, and I felt like it was all taken away from me. I wasn’t thinking about the risks I was putting other people in, let alone myself. I think a lot of teens don’t. However, it’s not just teens we should be worried about. Any person at any age is capable of not paying attention, reckless driving, sleep deprivation, and countless other components that can cause car accidents. I know accidents happen and wrecks can’t overall just disappear, but by paying attention not only in that class but also on the roads, so many lives can be spared and wrecks prevented. It doesn’t necessarily take two people to cause an accident, it just takes one split second of distraction from one person and the results can be detrimental. Knowing the risk factors and how your decisions behind the wheel could potentially take the life of another human being is so important to every driver. One of my rules for any person that steps foot in my car is I will never put the car in drive until your seat belt is on. If you take it off, I will pull the car over until you put it back on. As crazy as that may sound, there is no reason to not wear a seat belt, especially when it could save your life that I, as the driver, am responsible for. It’s the little things like setting rules and boundaries to keep your passengers safe, and making sure you’re perfectly capable of paying attention and keeping your eyes on the road that will reduce the numbers of wrecks and fatalities. Pay attention in your drivers ed class. When you enter your car, understand the importance you are serving. Together we can make a change and save lives.