Saving Future Lives

Car accidents are one of the leading causes of death around the world. Many are due to distracted or negligent drivers. Some accidents are not due to human error, like having faulty car parts, but the majority of accidents include some sort of human action to cause it. A lot of accidents are due to the driver’s willing decision to speed or drive recklessly, which will never have a positive result. These certain drivers really should reevaluate their decisions because they have too many chances of negative results. This includes getting a costly ticket by a policeman, getting their license taken, or the worst, getting into a fatal accident. 

By prioritizing driver education, people will be less likely to get in a car accident due to their own carelessness. It’s important that people are very educated on the roads so that they never feel uncomfortable in their travels. If drivers are taught many situations and given information on road signs and lines, they will feel less pressure and confusion when driving in new conditions. I’ve seen many accidents where someone doesn’t see the “no right turn” sign lit up and also ones where people don’t know how to react when sliding in snow or hydroplaning. In order to give people this information, all potential drivers should be required to take extensive driving tests that cover a large range of situations. Currently, the tests are pretty basic, and I feel that they may not prepare people for a lot of things. When I took the test, I specifically remember it didn’t ask many questions about road signs and lines, but you must understand the road markings in order to drive safely. It mostly asked situational questions (like what to do at a four way stop) and lacked tough situations like how to act when sliding on ice. Implementing more of these questions and more specific, higher-level questions into study quizzes and the real test will ensure people are educated on a wide range of driving topics. This may be a stretch, but possibly people could be required to actually take driving classes and tests prior to taking their test at the DMV. Even better, in the future there could be car simulators available to everyone that allow people to practice driving without physically being on the road. People may complain about the costs for something like this, but to me it will be saving future costs including accident aid, hospital costs, police intervention, court cases, jail time, etc.

One of the reasons why I think driver education is so important is that I don’t want my family and friends to be a victim of poor driving (due to themselves or others). Especially if it wasn’t their fault, I would feel so many emotions towards the person who caused them to be injured or even worse, dead. After hearing from my best friend that she was t-boned in an intersection and sprained her wrist (which held her back from playing her freshman year of college softball), I was full of many emotions, but glad it wasn’t worse. Additionally, I have been in a car accident once where another car ran a red light and hit my friend’s car when we were turning into the lane. Luckily, we were not injured at all, but it is always a scare when someone hits you at that speed. Maybe if the man who hit us was educated on decisions at a yellow light, he would have avoided the accident. Experiencing and hearing of all of these accidents (and noticing how common they are) makes me want driver’s education to be evermore prioritized.

Personally, I can be a safer driver on the roads by looking both ways before accelerating at a green light. This is because you never know when someone is going to run a red light. I am a safe driver myself, but simply being more aware of potential situations can save me from a future accident due to others. To help other drivers on the road, I think the most I could do at this point in my life is to just communicate with them about driving. Mentioning to drive safely or to survey their surroundings when driving could help them. If I’m in their car, I could alert them of certain things in the road, like a speeding driver coming up on the side of the car. Overall, I really think it’s the driver education system’s job to ensure people know what they are doing on the roads, which will indefinitely lower accidents based on drivers’ lack of knowledge. It’s up to them how they are going to impact future driver’s lives.