Too Fast, We’re Furious

Too Fast, We’re Furious

My friend’s uncle had stopped at an intersection in a car with his wife and three kids. Once the lights turned green, he started crossing the intersection. A car on the intersecting street was thirty mph over the speed limit. He wasn’t able to slow down on time and hit my friend’s uncle’s car, causing him, his wife, and their baby to flip in the car a few times before landing upside down. Luckily, the baby came out of the accident fine and the mom only got a broken arm. The dad of three kids was permanently paralyzed, unable to even now sit up in a chair. His family is struggling. This is a prime example of a lack of drivers ed. If it weren’t for the speeding car, my friend’s uncle and his family would not have been immobilized. His kids wouldn’t be disadvantaged going into school and applying for college— every kid’s dream.

For the past couple years I’ve been a counselor at a summer camp. Prospective counselors were quizzed on what they would do in certain situations, much like the current permit test. During the camp, the counselors don’t get very much time to think of the perfect reaction to a kid having a mental breakdown. When we started putting the prospective counselors in awkward, realistic situations and giving them feedback as part of the training, we saw a huge difference in how well they were prepared to deal with young children. Many teenagers don’t have very much experience with leading children effectively, and all of us definitely don’t have experience driving. Similar to this counselor training, drivers ed should not be about being asked what the ideal response would be. A driver is never as calm as they are in their test. Instead, we should have prospective drivers run through simulations. In that situation, you also get to put the trainees in realistic scenarios which you wouldn’t otherwise be able to do without putting them in danger. It’s easy to tune out a monotone speaker, but it’s not easy to tune out a simulation that is a lot more engaging and, frankly, a lot more fun. With effective drivers ed, we can have less immobilized families like my friend’s.