Name: Kaitlyn Pierce
From: Galesburg, IL
Votes: 11
When I was 16, I was driving home with my younger sister, traveling on a road we used daily to get to and from school, feeling secure and comfortable. Even though this route was well-committed to muscle memory and felt effortless, things changed dramatically when a car unexpectedly swerved into my lane one evening. That split second changed everything and it didn’t matter that I hadn’t broken any traffic laws or that I was paying attention to the road ahead of me. We crashed and panic set in immediately. I couldn’t comprehend what had happened at first and it felt as though I was in a nightmarish dream state until I finally registered my sister saying my name over and over again, also in a panic.
Things could have ended very differently than they did that night. It might have been a pain to have to call the police and fix the damage to the car, but thankfully, neither my sister and I nor the passengers in the other car sustained any serious injuries. The experience was nonetheless one of the most jarring and distressing of my life, both in the immediate aftermath and in the following months dealing with the long insurance process. And yet, we were lucky when it comes to car accidents.
In order to ensure safer roads, all drivers have a responsibility to practice safe driving habits. There are of course the basic strategies that are well known and publicized: wear a seatbelt, don’t text and drive, follow traffic rules. In addition to this though, it’s critical that drivers maintain a high sense of caution and awareness at all times because the possibility of unexpected circumstances can never be eliminated. And when we see others failing to use safe driving skills, it’s important to call those out and correct the behavior. Maybe it takes the form of offering to answer someone’s messages for them while they drive or maybe it’s a direct request to change something the driver is doing. Either way, this is one of the best ways to stop dangerous behaviors in their tracks and hopefully prevent them from happening again. While I can and will personally take many of these steps in my own life, the movement for greater change must happen on a much larger scale.
In my experience, lack of quality education is a root cause for many of society’s ailments, and driver’s safety is no exception. The current system is incomplete, unregulated, and vague, and we see the consequences of that in the depressing statistics surrounding car accident deaths, totaling over 34,000 a year in the US alone. More standardized and continuous driving education programs and requirements would significantly help close the knowledge gap that many drivers have surrounding safety. Having better driver’s education programs both when people first get their licenses and as they renew them throughout life would make for a much more well-informed population and level the playing field a bit when it comes to road conditions and safe driving. Further, formal and informal ways of spreading information such as through public service announcements or social media can help tremendously because some people honestly don’t know the full extent of the risks and wider access to that information will help make roads safer.
Additionally, cultural changes can potentially be powerful forces of good when it comes to safer roads; too often, people engage in unsafe driving habits not because they think it’s safe, but rather because they feel pressured to meet some other expectation, such as being on time, answering messages quickly, or wanting to hide substance use. These expectations might cause people to drive too fast or look at their phones while driving or get behind the wheel when they are too drunk or high to do so safely, and it unnecessarily puts them and everyone else on the road at risk. These social forces are strong and escaping them is easier said than done, so being intentional about how we discuss such topics and what we expect from others can help reduce the pressures.
On a more governmental level, increasing access to and affordability of public transportation could help reduce the number of traffic-related deaths simply by reducing the number of cars on the road at any given time. Less traffic means less accidents, which means less deaths. While public transit has a lot of benefits, it’s simply not available to as many people as it could be and is therefore underutilized.
Ultimately, the solution to dangerous driving conditions is a complicated one and likely requires a multitude of different approaches, but there are lots of small steps that individual drivers and passengers alike can make routinely to help move us in the right direction. My own experiences of being in a car accident and witnessing others make poor driving choices makes this topic particularly important to me and while the process will be a long one, I do believe it’s possible to greatly increase the safety of our roads and I hope that people everywhere will choose to play an active role in achieving that goal.
