Picture Yourself: The Assumptions in Dangerous Driving

Picture yourself: you are driving down a street you have driven a thousand times, you are on your way home after a long day of work, of school, of just being with friends. Your phone vibrates and beeps: you have a text message. You know the road well and know where the side roads and turns are, so you assume it will be fine to look down at your phone to see what it says when SUDDENLY. You are hit by another driver. They came out of their driveway assuming you were going at the speed limit and they had enough time to exit. However, you were too busy looking at your phone to look at how much your speed had increased.

This is an all-too-common occurrence in our time, but how can driving education reduce situations like this from occurring? This short essay explains how a simple step of educating, even confident drivers to not assume others reactions and pay attention to the roads can reduce such accidents from occurring as often as they do.

Firstly, such situations as aforementioned are usually heard about from friends, family or on the news. However, every driver would not expect it for themselves to be in that situation. Yet recent distracted driving statistics indicate the opposite. While 77 percent of adults and 55 percent of teens believe that they have the skills to manage to text while driving, texting while driving increases the chances of a car accident by 23 times.^[1]

So why do drives assume they will not be in accidents? The answer is simple: they don’t pay attention to the road, and assume others reactions.

Usually, drivers that stop paying as much attention to the road and their surroundings is due to becoming too comfortable behind the wheel. Notice the use of the word ‘too’ as while becoming comfortable behind the wheel is not necessarily a ‘bad’ thing. It is good to feel comfortable in your vehicle and that you have control of your car but it is only becomes dangerous when one becomes too comfortable. Such comfortability can cause irresponsible driving. We all have had a friend or family member drive irresponsibly due to ‘knowing the roads’ or confident that they ‘know what is coming up’. But this is where the most accidents occur; where one is most comfortable.

Drivers ed in safer driving could reduce such reckless and unnecessary deaths in relation to driving. Educating drivers on why paying attention to the road, and to the other users of the road is necessary and vital, in order to stop accidents and consequently fatal injuries and mortalities from occurring.

Simply, drivers should be educated on understanding that assumptions can kill, if you can not safely decide an action, you should not do it. You can only predict your own action in that moment, not the actions or reactions of others. How one driver reacts will be different from how another driver will react. Many accidents occur like the situation above, due to the other person assuming how the other car will react or proceed.

The single step to take to be a safer driver on the road, while simultaneously helping others is to be aware of your surroundings and pay attention to the road. If one focuses on the road, not on their phones for example, and do not assume how everyone on the road will react, I believe the roads will be a lot safer. So in conclusion, picture yourself: pay attention and do not assume.

[1] https://safer-america.com/car-accident-statistics/#distracted