One Second Can End Your Life

Florida has one of the highest traffic death rates and this essay shows and describes ways to prevent this and how to encourage others not to participate in texting and driving and other related activities that can lead to an accident. This essay alone can help at least one person understand the importance of safe driving, and if this at least helps one person then that is a change for the better.

Driver Education is extremely important in reducing the number of deaths as a result of driving. Today in Florida, I could be rich for the amount of times I’ve seen people on their phones either phone up to ear talking or texting, I’ve even seen someone playing nintendo switch while driving! This is scary and continues to be, because it seems as though they don’t know how important their lives, the lives of the people in their car, and the lives of the other people driving on roads are. I have been in two car accidents, one being that I was physically hit by a car in the third grade and on another occasion I was T-boned in a car that my family was in. The day my family and I were T-boned, we were just leaving our house to take my aunt to the airport, we were still on the street of my house. The other street had a stop sign where the other vehicle was supposed to stop. The other vehicle did not stop and in just a second I looked out the window to my right and the car crashed into our car; the car tilted a bit to the left, but thankfully did not turn over. During the crash my head collided into my moms, and my moms into my aunts, and my head back into the window. My neighbors rushed to the scene and called 911, this was during an afternoon where students were dropped off from the school bus and everyone saw. All I could hear was my dad frantically asking me if I was okay and worried about me and not him. Shortly after the ambulance arrived, an EMT asked which is more injured to go first, and my dad without hesitation yelled take my daughter. Before this day my dad had been in multiple car accidents, none that were his fault and resulted in back problems. This crash only made things worse and resulted in more damage; my parents and I had to go visit a chiropractor every week until our spines were realigned. Weeks after, we went to court and found out that the driver had a suspended license, was intoxicated, ran from the scene and came back, the vehicle was not his car, and was speeding.

The steps that can be taken to reduce the number of deaths related to driving is common sense. Nothing is more important than your life and the life of others. Do not use your phone while driving, if you need it as a GPS then use a phone mount and put in your destination before driving. If it is an important phone call, pull over and then take it, or call back after getting to your destination. If you are having a conversation with a passenger in your car, do not turn to look at them, keep your eyes on the road, I promise you they won’t take offense of no eye contact, you are saving theirs and your life! The basics of the road are very important, there is a drivers test for a reason to make sure you know and adhere to the rules of the road. Remember driving is a privilege, not a right! Use your blinkers when passing into lanes, so many people do not use their blinkers, this helps to inform others when you are going to pass into a lane. Keeping one car at a distance, there is no reason as to why a car should be trailing another. This rule gives enough reaction time to do an emergency stop if needed without hitting another car. Driving to the speed limit is very important, and all other basic knowledge of driving is all very important but it seems that most people throw that out the window and do not care much about it.

One step that I can take to become a better driver is to not have road rage, I don’t have a lot but to see all of these people not care, really bothers me, but I cannot let it affect my judgement and heighten my emotions because that is also a factor that can dely my reaction time.