Remember the Little Things

When we think about distracted driving, the famous villains include speeding, drinking, and texting, but we often overlook silent killers like sleepiness, weariness, and sickness. Many people drive while sleepy or tired, but that doesn’t make it safe. A simple fix is to stay out of the car if you aren’t feeling normal, but a lot of people won’t do this, for the same reason they will power through a school day with an illness or without enough sleep. After many years of driving, people start to push the limit on how healthy and alert they have to be to drive. The best way to fix these beliefs is to stop them at the start at driving school.

Driver education is required in many states, and most schools do a good job of stressing the dangers of distracted driving. Still, many drivers bend or break driving rules, especially if they have been driving for a long time. Part of the reason is that some of the education comes before students first sit behind the wheel. It’s easy to understand traffic laws and road signs from the classroom, but some concepts like judging distances and knowing when to stay out of the driver’s seat have to be experienced to be understood. Leaving the distracted driving instruction to a later date could make it easier for drivers to see the seriousness of distracted driving and the importance of staying out of the driver’s seat when you are unable to drive.

While experience can make some parts of driver education more relevant, it can also make it easier to forget what you learned. As drivers become more experienced, some will stop driving actively and start driving subconsciously. They think that they can turn their brains off and rely on muscle memory because they have driven a route thousands of times. The people that think this way will also think that advertisements and announcements about safe driving don’t apply to them. One way to get around this is to spread the word about safe driving so the pressure to follow safe habits from other people will be so strong that it can’t be ignored. Another solution is to include driver education in schools. When driver education takes place in another setting, it makes it seem like it isn’t as important as other subjects. If schools taught driver safety the same way they teach drug safety, more people would understand how serious driving is.

Even if you are trying to be an attentive driver, it can be difficult to do everything right. Sometimes you can zone out and miss important obstacles like pedestrians, signs, or curves, even when you are looking right at the road. This is more common with older people who are so confident they sometimes skip important steps. Confident driving is usually safe driving, but road conditions are never predictable, whether it’s rain, debris, or other cars and pedestrians, so drivers should be aware that they won’t be going down the same road twice. A solution is to be alert from the day you start driving. If this is just a part of the process, when you lapse out and let your memory take the wheel, you will at least turn your head to look for pedestrians or obstacles, and that might be all it takes to avoid a disaster. This isn’t a perfect solution, but there aren’t many other practical, effective solutions because the most confident drivers are the most vulnerable to this type of distracted driving, and they will be the least likely to accept driving advice.

While driver education seems pointless if many drivers won’t listen, it is the easiest and most straightforward way to reduce distracted driving. Driving schools across the country do a great job of teaching new drivers, but their lessons could be forgotten or ignored by older drivers who trust their own experiences more than the words of others. They would not just ignore driving schools, but also other driving authorities like advertisements or public service announcements, because they do not think the messages are directed at them, especially if they have not been a bad driver before. Still, because bad driving does not always lead to accidents, many drivers with dangerous habits do not realize the risks they pose to themselves, to the people that ride with them, and to other drivers and pedestrians. An effective solution to reduce distracted driving would have to make driver safety a common issue that goes beyond the government informing the people about what to do, and instead has the people understanding and sharing the message.