A Happier Nation

In 2019, soon after I moved to the United States from Brazil, I had to deal with the extremely sad news that one of my dear classmates had tragically passed away due to a car accident. As anyone could imagine, it was an extremely hard time for my family, friends, and school community, who had to deal with such shocking news about someone so close to us. Accidents like this happen more frequently than they should, if only everyone would be more aware of the dangers of driving. For such, it would be of great need to implement more rigorous driving education for children and adolescents, more conscientizing campaigns, greater self reflection coming from everyone, and more street enforcement. 

First of all, education as children is important for all aspects of adult life. According to Abdul Malik Muftau in his article “Do Kids Learn Faster than Adults?”, written in 2014, kids learn faster than adults because the prefrontal cortex of the brain, where working memory is stored, is more developed in adults than children. Now, driving education is especially important because it not only involves one person, but also their loved ones and their communities. In order for more road tragedies to be avoided, children should learn in school from kindergarten age about having responsibility on the roads, through dynamic activities that would allow them to develop an abranging view of the driving situation. Everything we learn from early ages has an impact on how we react later in life, therefore, the early introduction is extremely important in the bigger picture. 

Now, conscientizing campaigns exist for a reason: their effectiveness. “Communication campaigns are more successful if they are tailored to the context, values, language, and resources available to local audiences,” says Brad Hesse, PhD, chief of the Health Communication and Informatics Research Branch at the National Cancer Institute. “Priorities for which audiences to reach are usually set by an understanding of who is most vulnerable.” Today, we see campaigns for all kinds of awareness topics, such as cancer, drugs, and environment, and there is no reason why careful driving shouldn’t be one as well. From outdoor posters to social media videos, citizens should have the constant reminder about not drinking and driving, renewing their licenses, transit signs, and traffic rules. One idea is to create a month of awareness, just like there is for other topics. In this month, driving education would be specially enforced in schools, work, and social media. Visual content is proven to have an extreme impact on people, therefore the campaigns should not be taken for granted. One flyer at a time, one less accident on the streets. 

As well as the outside influences of the school and campaigns, one has to always reflect about their responsibility on the road as well. Not only about their physical impact when driving, but their power of influence on others. Everything a parent, teacher, babysitter, cousin, or nanny says to a kid, has an extremely big impact. It is always important, therefore, for parents to instruct their children safely, for teachers to give a positive example, and for neighbors to remind each other frequently. We live in a world in which we have the power to create an impact on our communities, therefore we should use it with intelligence about safe driving. I personally intend to always be a responsible driver and to be a positive influence to those around me, helping those in need. 

The counties and states themselves should also have more enforcement on the streets. Checkpoints to inspect on sobriety and documents should be constant, as well as tickets given for such. More police should be going around schools, hospitals, concerts, and places with a big amount of pedestrians in order to prevent accidents. People who are speeding, drunk, or disrespecting driving laws should be treated with no tolerance, as their acts could cause extreme impacts on people who have nothing to do with their irresponsibility. Police could also act in education events on schools, community boards, and national events. 

Finally, it can be concluded that, in order to avoid more car accidents and to make the streets safer for both the drivers and the pedestrians, there are a number of actions that should be taken. Children should learn from an early age about safe driving, national campaigns should be yearly enforced, we should all use our own power of influence to make our communities better, and police should be enforced on the streets. This way, accidents like the one my classmate was tragically involved in, will everyday be less common, families more in peace, and the whole nation happier.