We Can’t All Be Steve McQueen

Imagine: It is early morning during summertime. The dew floats heavenly over the asphalt. It’s not too hot with just the right amount of breeze. There is nowhere to go, nowhere to rush to, but everywhere to explore. Conveniently, the roads are empty. It’s simply you and the horizon. Of course, this is all a lie. Everyday we interact with people while driving, whether we like it or not. It’s simply a fact of life that we will eventually see other cars on the road on our way to work, school, or anywhere else we need to go. Unfortunately, no one is Steven McQueen in Bullitt (no matter how hard I try): we all have to follow rules and regulations while driving to prevent accidents and vehicle deaths.

Driver education is a significant, if not THE most significant, tool when it comes to preventing the number of deaths on the road by teaching and reinforcing behaviors on how to properly drive. When citizens know what to do in common driving situations, especially when those situations can lead to fatal accidents, they make the road feel safer for not only themselves, but for their fellow drivers. While every U.S. citizen is required to take and pass a driver education assessment before getting their license, states can still do more to ensure better safety on the road. States can also implement biennial car check-ups where drivers have to take a driving test similar to the one taken before they got their license. This test will have a safety portion where drivers will have to orally recite and demonstrate safety procedures to a certified instructor in a closed-off course. To prevent fatigue and/or cheating, check-ups will never be the same for each driver and the procedures tested on will differ every other year. If for some reason a DMV location has a huge swarm of check-up appointments at a given time or does not have ample space for a closed-off course, the state can bestow a car simulator to that DMV. The car simulator involves a driver wearing a virtual reality headset, holding a plastic car wheel, in a room no larger than a child’s nursery; they will hear the instructor through the headset and follow the safety procedures that way.

Of course, these safety driving check-ups will vary based on the statistics of driving deaths a particular state might have. For example, if State A has a high number of fatal vehicle crashes per year, their safety check-ups will change from a biennial occurence to an annual or even biannual occurrence; but if State B’s crash statistics are lower than the national average then they need not worry about increasing their safety check-ups in a given year. Car manufactures can even take a part in driving safety by including safety tips in their manuals and application systems. For older vehicles, there should be a way to implement AI-breaking and blind spot warning systems without messing up the older mechanics and burdening drivers with hefty mechanic fees. A third suggestion to prevent vehicle deaths is introducing driver education earlier in young people’s lives. The youth aren’t allowed to obtain a license until the sweet age of 16 (in most U.S. states), but we teach them the proper driving rules and safety precautions only a year before in their freshman year of high school, and then experts are stumped on why teenagers make up the largest age demographic of car deaths almost every year. If driver education was taught beginning in seventh or eighth grade, young people can have safety rules in their memory much earlier and for a longer period of time.

I have had the unfortunate experience of being in a car accident. In this instance, the person who hit my mother and I was not in the wrong: there was a stray dog that ran unexpectedly in the road and the car in front of us quickly stepped on their breaks. Luckily, my mother was able to break just in time, but the driver behind us was not. While driver education is important it cannot always predict car accidents because life does not happen according to a script. This is not to say that driver education is not important. Learning can go a long way to improving life skills, especially when those skills involve the safety of other human beings. I like driving with my friends and family because I can see errors in their driving styles that they don’t see themselves, because that driving has been normalized in their eyes. My friends and family can analyze and critique my driving skills in turn to help me become a better driver and see the errors in my ways, no matter how subtle or blatant. We can’t all be Steve McQueen ripping and racing through the steep streets of San Francisco in Bullitt, but at least we can imagine.