Driving Safely When You’re Human

I was in the car with my mom, who was following a family friend who I’ll call Anna. We turned right at an intersection and had to stop suddenly because someone a few cars ahead of us who was turning left had sped into a small gap across traffic. All the cars in front of us were able to stop in time, but Anna rear-ended the car in front of her. Her airbag went off, which broke one of her ribs and caused severe bruising. My mom jumped out of the car and urged me to come with her. Together we helped Anna move her totaled car to the side of the road so it wouldn’t block traffic. That day, there was only a seatbelt and a nylon bag keeping Anna from possible death.

The situation Anna was in that day is all too common. We take for granted just how precise drivers have to be every single day to avoid deadly consequences on the road. If we were all robots who drove perfectly, we would never get in car accidents because our road laws make sense. Unfortunately, as logical and consistent as these laws are, they’re not always kind to the human beings who have to follow them. Because we’re prone to imperfection, there are many ways our psychology prevents us from being on top of things while driving.

For one thing, we’re biased in our perception of time. A minute can feel like an eternity or less than a second depending on the mental state of the person who’s experiencing it. On the road, looking away for even just a few moments can cause a fatal car accident, but we aren’t equipped to understand exactly how long that is.

Another issue that drivers run into is that it’s easy to become distracted. Even in a vehicle with no obvious distractions, a driver might get bored and stop paying attention to their surroundings. This situation becomes infinitely more complicated with the addition of music, phone calls, texts, and other passengers.

On top of that, a driver can easily be thrown off by their emotional state. If they get in the car feeling angry or anxious, it will negatively affect how they drive. A frightening or infuriating situation out on the road will make it exponentially worse.

Lastly, drivers tend to fall into routines. Even in ideal circumstances, having to switch over from performing an action you’ve done a thousand times to being present so you can react to an unusual situation is difficult. The countless times you’ve driven along one stretch of highway with no issues will not prepare you for the one time you have to get out of the way of a reckless driver.

This is why driver’s education is essential. We don’t understand these limitations by default because we can’t see our own behavior from the outside. Someone has to teach us what to expect while we’re driving and how to cope with the relative nature of our own perceptions. Driver’s education gives us the tools we need to be mindful and react to our surroundings in time to save our lives while we’re out on the road.

The most important thing we can understand about how to create safe driving conditions is the drivers themselves. Realistically, what are our limits? How focused can a human being be in typical driving conditions? If we’re mindful of our own biases and shortcomings as drivers, we’ll be much more equipped to handle challenging driving situations in the future.

One way driver’s education programs can implement this mindset is to design their courses not just so that students will understand road laws, but that they’ll be equipped to handle real-life situations that they may not have the opportunity to witness while their teacher is in the passenger seat. It’s common knowledge that written laws and actual driving practices overlap but aren’t necessarily the same. Driver’s education programs should include material on predicting the behavior of other drivers based on this knowledge.

They should also encourage new drivers to watch each other and make sure that their peers are driving safely. It’s much easier to pay attention to someone else’s behavior than to be mindful of your own. Creating a new generation of drivers that keep each other accountable would cause social change that might be widespread enough to prevent many deaths.

However, at a certain point, the education drivers receive has to give in to their experiences. Any change we make to driver’s education programs will only affect the youngest drivers and not the majority who are already out on the road. The only way meaningful change can be made in this demographic is through technology, which tracks time perfectly and lacks many of the other limitations people face. We’re already seeing this change in small ways, like with the rise of Bluetooth devices and apps designing their user interfaces to have bigger buttons when the user starts their car.

It’s easy to see how Anna’s car accident could have been prevented when we put these ideas together. It might not have happened if she was mindful of how quickly she would need to stop. If someone else had been in the car with her and they were paying attention, they could have pointed out the erratic driver up ahead, and any distractions that might have caused her not to notice on her own could have been minimized through the use of technology designed for her car.

This is just one story and one car accident. However, I believe that many deaths and injuries could be prevented by understanding safe driving from a human perspective. Even if the number only goes down by a small amount, that’s still a few people who step out of their cars tomorrow, ready to experience a life they would have missed if they’d been out on the road today. I think that’s worthy enough to make a change.