Statistics Are Not Enough

We all know about the dangers of distracted driving, but a lot of people don’t seem to understand its severity. Especially during driver’s education everyone gets bombarded with numbers and polls and statistics but that doesn’t help when it comes to completely understanding how important driving safely really is. Of course, the facts matter and puts into scale how many people are victims to distracted driving but for a lot of people they’ll see the numbers but not the impact of those deaths. Only giving people the statistics makes it more likely that the numbers is all they are going to see, they won’t be forced to see the real individuals behind those numbers, individuals with families, friends, and how their lives were cut short by something as preventable as distracted driving. The only way to prevent it is to be aware of your surroundings and understand that one is responsible for their life and the lives of the drivers around them.

It’s safe to assume everyone knows someone who that isn’t the safest driver, they act like the rules don’t apply to them and that bad things can’t happen to them no matter how irresponsibly they are driving. A few of my friends said they breezed through driver’s ed, especially if they took it online. Those same friends were the ones that didn’t understand how serious getting behind the wheel is, they would run red lights, speed, and even text while driving even though they all knew the dangers and risks of what could happen to them or what could happen to others. Rest assured I was not one of their passengers more than once because I truly feared for my life. In my driver’s education program, it showed a handful of testimonials of families who had lost their child from them driving irresponsibly or other drivers on the road being irresponsible. I know a lot of programs also show them which has been proven to be very effective in the eyes of new drivers. What those testimonials made me understand is how fast things can change just by making a mistake or being briefly distracted while driving and most importantly it made me see how all the deaths reported from distracted or drunk driving are not just numbers but people who had a lot of life left to live and it came to a sudden end all because of people who couldn’t care enough to pay attention while behind the wheel.

Most people involved in accidents caused by distracting driving are teens and younger drivers. For teens the driver’s ed is even more rigorous and longer hours so why do they make such a high percentage people involved in accidents? Research states that it is because the prefrontal cortex isn’t fully developed until our early 20’s and obviously teens don’t have as much life experience or experience in long-term decision making which makes them susceptible to making poor decisions on the road even when they know and have been advised otherwise. It’s even been reported that when teens have friends in the car, they are most likely to be distracted and put everyone in the vehicle in danger. A simple legal solution for that problem would be to raise the driving age minimum from sixteen to eighteen but from age sixteen they can only drive with an adult in the passenger’s seat. This would ensure that young teens are making the right decisions and not solely influenced by their friends. It would also help since they are older and will hopefully have gained more life experience that will aid them in making the correct decisions while driving. An effective way to instill safe habits in new drivers is to make the video testimonials of families that have lost a loved one to careless driving a requirement and making students realize that driving is not a fun way of getting around or a right they have but that it is a privilege that can and should be taken away when driving irresponsibly. Another way to make new drivers more responsible is that during behind the wheel driving to make all the students practice putting their phone away or at least putting it on silent, and practice to always make sure that their radio preference and air conditioning preference are set to their liking before they even begin to drive so that when they are actively on the road they will not get distracted and there will be no need to shift their focus from the road to any other tasks.