The Importance of Fear in Safe Driving

“But how do I look?”

“Just look to the side, the other side, the rear…”

“But in what order?”

“Just look everywhere!” she breathed, exasperated, leaning back in the passenger seat. Could I help it that the moment I looked in one direction, it occured to me that someone might just be turning the corner in the last place I looked? How could I even see when I was backing out of a car sandwich in a parking lot? It was fear that drove me to stall, a deep fear cradled by tragic documentaries of teenage car accidents displayed in my drivers ed class. Yet my mother, despite all of her annoyance at my indecision, always dismissed my fears of hitting someone over pure bad handling. She repeatedly said, “It’s not the careful drivers like you who cause accidents, it’s the careless ones. The distracted ones.”

It’s not like I wasn’t ever distracted. Occasionally when I was arguing with her over right-of-way I would come to hastier stop at a red light than normal. Even when I tried to deny it, it rang true – talking with others in the car is a distraction. Thinking hard about something that happened that day is a distraction. It’s not just the legendary makeup artist driver, or the multitasking teen in the middle of text message drama; when a driver is a beginner, it is in their best interest to actively remove distractions.

Drivers ed classes are doing a great job at driving home the fact that today, distractions are the number one cause of traffic accidents. As many new drivers are young teenagers, they undoubtedly hate hearing yet another reason for their parents to berate their use of smartphones and music streaming. This is where fear comes in. The videos and news stories about promising students turned paraplegic, shocked family members knowing their loved one was merely a victim, and much-too-late warnings from guilt-stricken drivers are terrifying, yes, but they make the threat intensely real. Some people take pride in their “multi-tasking” skill. They need to know that driving holds much more at stake than spending an extra hour to finish homework with the TV on, that if it can happen to real people who had the exact same mindset, it can happen to them too.

Of course, fear is only a step. If a driver is constantly nervous as a result of fear, that can also cause problems in traffic. But fear has always been a step. In the case of driving, that fear awakens drivers to potential mistakes in their operation of a vehicle, which they can work to be aware of and fix, making them not only an attentive driver but bestowing confidence and calm knowhow in dire times. Fear lets us see what could go wrong before it does; in this way, it’s also essential to defensive driving – we evaluate and are prepared for the mistakes of others.