Safe Driving and Why It Matters

Luke Langston

Safe Driving and Why It Matters

I believe that driver’s education is the single most important way of reducing driving-based deaths, especially in teens and young adults. With anything in life, to be good at something, you must learn and practice. For example, a guitar player cannot play without learning chords and practicing, and a quarterback can’t throw a touchdown without learning how to throw a football. From an outsider’s standpoint, it may look easy to do, but building that foundation through learning is what makes Grammy-winning albums and super bowls. The same applies with driving. Before a sixteen-year-old sits behind a wheel, they may have spent hours watching their family or friends drive, and from that outsider’s point of view, it looks easy. That kind of everyday exposure can create a false sense of security that driving is an effortless task. Through driver’s education, teens learn that driving is not as simple as pressing the accelerator and moving a steering wheel. It involves learning about the rules of the road and how to navigate through harsh conditions and other life saving tips that simply could not be gained from observation alone.

Personally, I think a step that should be taken is adding a requirement for a driver’s test to renew a license. Not that it must be as extensive as what a new driver would have to go through, but a sort of review that shows that each person updating their license is a competent driver. I know some adults that have been driving longer than I’ve been alive that drive like crap and they’ll most likely never go through a driving course again in their lives.

Unfortunately, I have witnessed multiple car accidents, but there is one that stands out as the scariest because it could’ve easily been myself getting hit. I was leaving the parking lot of a restaurant at night and I let a car go in front of me and followed them to a four way stop. There were no other cars, so the driver in front starts going forward, and when he was about halfway through, a truck came flying out of nowhere. The truck blew past the stop sign and T-boned the driver, who ended up driving into a ditch. Luckily, both drivers were okay, and the police were on the scene soon after. What made the crash so scary was that if I hadn’t let that driver go in front of me in the parking lot before, that would’ve been me getting rammed by the truck.

One thing that I need to do to be safer is to drive slower. I have a smaller car, so it is easy for me to gun it once a light turns green and get up to 40 mph before the cars behind me have started moving. It’s obviously very risky because I would not have much of a reaction time if another car decided to run a red light. So, by slowing down, I can make myself and other drivers safe.