It Sucks to Drive In South Florida

“You guys understand where I’m coming from right? Why does it suck to drive in South Florida?!” my psychology teacher projects to the class in an effective attempt to get us to participate. “Tourists?” I pipe up. “Precisely! They don’t know how OUR driving works here, they are constantly not paying enough attention.Old people too! They could leave their blinkers on for miles and be none the wiser.” South Florida is known to be a hotspot of poor driving and we have made it something easy to joke about even though the reality is quite frightening.That is why the importance of driving education is extremely endearing to me.

What my driving education did that I believe helped me the most as a driver, was expose me to images and stories of car crashes.I learned more about the effects of drugs and alcohol and saw many DUI horror stories.

Driving is the most dangerous form of transportation however, it is much more common to find someone with a fear of flying than with a fear of driving. Why is that? Simply put, it is our brain’s way of processing the world. It is called the Availability Heuristic; things that come to mind quicker, we think are more likely to occur. We see more plane crashes than car crashes in the news and that is why we often think “This plane ride could be my last!” and “I’m a great driver, that could never happen to me!”. My driving education utilized the availability heuristic and completely changed my thinking about being on the road.

Because of our lackadaisical thinking around driving as a society, people are overconfident in their driving capabilities. In psychology it is called illusory superiority and it has been proven by the notable 1977 study that showed 94% of people thought of themselves as better drivers than average. With this egotistical, egocentric view on driving, people are more likely to call or text while driving which increases your chances of crashing by 4 and 23 times respectively.

So how do we change this? By undoing the problem at the root, the Availability Heuristic. As I mentioned earlier, driving education is excellent at dismantling it. Constant exposure to driving, text, calling, and DUI horror stories will reconfigure the availability heuristic to put into perspective the dangers of airplane and car travel.

When people are more aware of the severity of their regular every day activity, they will be more likely to focus while doing it. It could change society’s perspective on driving, which is most effective due to people’s desire to fit in, as social psychology has shown. Driving education is crucial because that is exactly what it does, it exposes soon-to-be-drivers to the horrors of driving, dismantling the availability heuristic and instilling a sense of reality that will encourage them to act smart on the road.

I am fortunate enough to have never been in a crash myself, but this is something my immediate family has experienced and it makes me realize that crashes really could happen to anybody. My mother was making a right turn at a four stop intersection dictated by stop signs. Due to the poor configuration of the road and the very thick woody plants on her right, her vision was obscured and suddenly a car came racing into the front of her truck. She is ok as well as the car but when I got home from school that day I could see how much it had affected her.

There was a story my mom would tell us nearly every time we made the turn on the intersection of Griffin and Bonaventure. A story about how my aunt’s friends were hanging out in an open door Jeep and as a joke, the driver of the car made a sharp swerve which sent one of the boys flying out the side of the car and landing on his head. He passed away after being brain dead for a few days. I never joke with my friends in the car like that and never will because that story stuck with me

Some of my friends have their own driving horror stories that have only solidified my own awareness when I’m behind the wheel. A friend of mine told me about how he was getting a ride home from a party with another friend. The driver spontaneously decided to accelerate to over 100 miles per hour on the highway and crashed into another car completely totalling it and sending the other person to the hospital. Now, I am hyper aware of not only my own driving, but who ever I trust to drive me around too.

There are lists of do’s and don’ts that you can partake in order to become a safer driver. Do avoid calling or texting while driving. Do not allow anyone to ride with you without a seatbelt on. Do keep you focused on the road and the cars around you. Do not try to beat the red lights and stop signs, they are there for your benefit.

Ultimately, we often overlook the dangers of driving due to its convenience. Additionally we can learn from our own experiences and from those of the people around us (i.e. our parents, friends, and psychology teachers). If we all put in the work, driving can be a better, safer method of transportation.