Driving: Habits for the Future

Just the other day, on my way to school and on my way home, I passed by two crashes. In one day, I bore witness to two shattered cars, two roads littered with glass and debris, two flashing police cars, and at least two people, in varying levels of distress, trying to keep it together on the side of the road. This, unfortunately, is not an uncommon occurrence. The more sympathetic of us may think “oh, I hope nobody got hurt” before continuing on with their day. For others, the sight, especially if accompanied by a detour or road block, may even bring about annoyance. We can’t just put our day on hold for such a common occurrence after all. We have to get to work and school, and the store. For many of us, the act of driving is a habitual, necessary, everyday activity. Seeing an accident when we were little may have elicited fear, concern, or maybe even curiosity, but overtime that emotional reaction wanes.

For many of us, when we first start driving, the experience can be exciting – all that freedom! – or even scary – so much could go wrong! I’d imagine it’s similar to learning how to walk. You can go anywhere you want, on your own two feet, but you can, and do, fall. Over time though, the novelty wears off and walking is just that, walking; a thing people do simply to get on with their lives. It becomes boring, mundane, habitual. Any habits you learned as a kid become ingrained, walking on the inside of your shoe, for example, or squeaking on the tile. Driving, I think, can be like that. Always following the speed limit, or always going five above, rolling every stop sign, or always wearing your seatbelt become a habit, part of a process you do simply to get to work, or school, or home. The habit becomes mindless and distraction prone. Now, you can eat, and talk, and, if you’re being risky, text while doing it. It’s no big deal, you do it everyday. Except of course, it is a big deal. The proof of that can be seen in those two accidents I passed by my school. It can be seen in the roadside crosses and the crashes so mundane that they can be brushed off with annoyance or “I hope no one was hurt.”

Adequate instruction, or driver’s ed, is crucial during the beginning phases of learning to drive. Not only does it help solidify what will become good habits later on, it also stresses the importance of safe driving. Even if someone doesn’t think driving is a “big deal,” even if their friends and family don’t take safe driving seriously, a driver’s ed course ensures that they’re informed about the consequences of reckless and distracted driving and are more adequately motivated to develop safe driving habits.

In the state of Utah, this is furthered by the requirement of 40 hours of driving with a parent or guardian, with at least 10 of those hours at night, before someone can get their license. This helps people build up good skills and habits before driving on their own, but there’s also little accountability. Many of my friends have skirted this responsibility because of the inconvenience, and missed out on the vital benefits of early, supervised practice. I think raising accountability for this would help new drivers stay safe.

Regardless of individual experiences with driver’s ed, or how experienced any individual driver is, we all have a responsibility to keep our roads safe. It’s easy to fall into steadily built up habits. It’s easy to think of driving as simply a mundane task that needs to be done to continue on with your day. It’s easy to cave to the temptation to flip the radio channel just once, or to just check your text messages, especially when you drive everyday. These things can seem so easy and simple, especially if you, like me, see your friends and family doing it.

Perhaps, you even see how bad it could go. Perhaps you see the crashes and realize that it may have been caused by distracted driving, but surely that couldn’t happen to you. Crashes like that are something that happens to other people who don’t know what they’re doing, and you do. But really, car crashes can happen to anyone, anytime, anywhere, just like tripping down the stairs, and the consequences can be so much more disastrous than a couple bruises or a skinned knee. Just remember that every time you get behind the wheel, you control more power than a loaded gun. Please drive responsibly.