A Piece of My Heart

Be careful, you have a piece of my heart in that car, is what my mom says almost every time I leave the house. Why? Because she is scared. She knows what can happen and the risks we all inherit everytime we drive a car. The obvious importance of drivers education in reducing the number of deaths as a result of driving is awareness and preparedness. To adequately prepare a new driver with the ability to recognize and react to a potential dangerous on road occurrence is key. For a driver to identify, react to, and hopefully avoid a potential life threatening situation on the road, or to navigate it for a better outcome, as a result of receiving proper training is critical. In short, learning defensive driving can drastically reduce the number of deaths as a result of driving. One way to do this, in addition to the obvious drivers education and on road training, is to inform new drivers of actual things that can, and do, happen to real people, every day. It can happen to anyone, anywhere, anytime. Lives can change in an instant as a result of a poor choice, or a quick decision. No one is exempt, and as scary as it is, sometimes these are the details that make new drivers recognize the true responsibility you accept every time you start the engine to your vehicle and turn onto the road. As bad as it sounds, fear can motivate us all to change a behavior, or to modify our actions to avoid that feared outcome.

We all know that wearing your seat belt has proven to save lives year after year. We also know that maintaining your vehicle, being aware of the environment you are driving in, the current weather, and driving while in a non impaired state contributes to this as well. But, most recently a huge factor in deadly driving accidents is driving while distracted. With social media gaining momentum and users, driving while distracted is becoming a forerunner in contributing factors to fatal driving accidents. No text or call is more important than a life. This needs to be taught in drivers ed classes, and perhaps letting students hear actual stories from real people that have endured a loss from distracted driving.

I myself enrolled in the class sponsored by KIA prior to getting my license about defensive driving and was shocked to learn about some of the statistics they taught on how fast situations can happen while distracted at the wheel. The founder of this program, Doug Herbert painfully describes at the beginning of the course the death of two sons, and how this tragedy motivated him to start this program to help prevent another family from enduring this monumental loss. The heartbreaking story and family pictures, accompanied by photos from the scene of the accident and newspaper clippings, makes it near impossible to ever forget. The what if’s, and thinking this could be your family, and the realization that it can happen to anyone at any time, is enough to scare any of us into making better, safer choices while driving. Other than a fender bender, myself and my family have not been involved in a car accident, but we have seen them and know people involved in them. For this I feel blessed, but also recognize the true responsibility of driving. So this is why I feel that maybe it is ok to get a little scared about the real things that can happen because maybe then we will all be more cautious while driving. A piece of someone’s heart is in that car, and being better prepared with defensive driving can reduce the number of driving fatalities.