Taking Caution While Driving

When first getting a permit at a young age, all you think about is the thrill of getting to drive without an adult in the car. You think about all the fun drives you can have with your friends and getting to go places without having to ask your family for a ride. The things that you should really be focusing on is being safe on the road. That’s why it is important to have driver education. This decreases the chances of getting into a car accident on the road. Driver education helps give knowledge to individuals on the possible outcomes of reckless driving and how they can be prevented. It helps provide instructions of defensive driving which allows a more safer approach to be cautious and careful on the road. I feel as if we do not give enough lessons to teenagers who are wanting to drive. It is more ethical to teach these children how to drive correctly at their early stages than them learning the hard way and getting into a car accident.

There are several steps that we can take to help decrease the number of deaths from driving. One step is by making driving school mandatory for teenagers that are interested in getting their license. This way, children are taught the rights and wrongs of driving. Another step is making sure all passengers are buckled up while driving. Wearing your seatbelt during a crash reduces the death rate to 45% and reduces injury to 50%. That is a drastic change that is important for all drivers and passengers to take into consideration. Another step is making sure you are not intoxicated when getting behind the wheel. Being drunk or high causes serious injuries and deaths per year. Not only does this put your life at risk but it also puts other people’s lives at risk too. Also reducing your speed while driving. There have been many instances that include people dying from someone else speeding. There is a speed limit for a reason, therefore you need to follow the speed limit to keep not only yourself but everyone else on the road safe. Also, texting while driving is one of the biggest issues. Not being fully aware of your surroundings and what is in front of you can cause serious consequences. In order to find your destination, you should pull over to the side of the road or wait before you start driving to enter where you need to go. Putting your phone on do not disturb is also a good way to avoid being distracted by your phone.

Whenever driving with my family members or friends, they tend to text and drive a lot. Usually I will offer to send a text message for them or even tell them where to go if they need directions. There have been many instances that my friends will start swerving because they are looking at their phone. I also make sure to tell them that it’s unsafe and most of the time they will put their phone away or give it to me to help them with what they were doing. Also, one of my family’s close friends was driving on the freeway when they had a collision with a drunk driver. Sadly they ended up passing from head collision and injuries. Drunk driving is a huge cause for these high death rates and it is wrong for these individuals to risk other peoples life because of their own decisions.

Things that I can do better while driving is to not speed as much as I do now. Also making sure that the passengers in my car always have their seatbelts on and if they refuse to, I wont drive them around. Whenever my friends or family plan on driving intoxicated, I will either offer to drive or pick them up so nothing bad will happen. I have had many instances where my family will drive drunk home so offering to drive or pick them up is something that I have always done and plan to continue to do. Even ordering them an uber when they aren’t okay to drive is also something I am planning on adding. I want to do anything in my power to help reduce the deaths that have been happening on the road. Also, I will call the police or report anybody on the road that I see swerving or driving unsafely. I really hope our society can make changes to this issue and I pray soon, we will have a decline in death rates from driving.