Just another number, right?

I come from a small town in Ohio called Minerva. In 2014, we lost three teens due to icy road conditions and they crashed and sadly passed away. I believe the importance of driver education is to inform future drivers of all the dangers posed to them the moment they step into their vehicle. Those dangers can be other drivers, bad weather, roadworks, potholes, and driving too fast. All potential drivers must go through drivers’ education, but all the preparation in the world cannot save from the dangers of driving. Reasonable precautions to be taken to help reduce the number of deaths due to driving is to always make sure ALL of your passengers buckle up. People always say that they do not need to buckle up due to them being in the backseat. I have seen accidents where people who were not wearing seatbelts in the backseats had broken their necks due to them slamming into the seat in front of them. Another precaution is to have a designated driver if you plan on drinking. When planning a night out where alcohol is involved, the first part of that plan should be how you and your friends are going to get home. Whether the designated driver is a friend who agrees to stay sober for the night or you book an Uber or Lyft; the main thing is getting home safe. Due to the jobs, I have had over the years, I often had to drive home late at night. I have been pushed off the read into cornfields and onto the shoulder of the road simply because someone is drunk or texting and driving and they come all the way over into my lane due to their incompetence. Driving while under the influence does not only put your life at risk, but everyone’s around you. My biggest fear is that one day I get the call that someone in my family has been killed due to a drunk driver. If you are intoxicated and you know you are either stay where you are or call someone to pick you up and take you home. I myself have never been a car crash but, I have had several close calls and seen many accidents firsthand. I remember the first accident I ever witnessed. I was about thirteen at the time. We came up to a stop sign and there was a car in front of us and they pulled just a touch too far to be able to see. A car came flying over the hill and smashed into the front of the car who had pulled too far the intersection and the car who had come over the hill veered into the oncoming lane and into a ditch. Both parties both ended up being ok but to this day, I can still hear the horn just blaring and my mind instantly going to someone laying lifeless against the horn. I recently had an experience with an accident just this summer. I was working and I was in the box truck with my coworker. We were coming to known bad intersection and we see a car just sitting in the field. We think it is a police officer due it to being a Ford Explorer but as we get closer, we see another car further down the road with a smashed in rear end and the Ford has a damaged front end. We see smoke coming from the front of the Ford so we both immediately hop into action and try to get the occupants of the Ford out of the car. My coworker continues to get them out of the car and across the street to safety as I go down to the car who had been rear-ended and I check on them to make sure they are ok. I make sure they do not have any neck injuries and they are fine, so I move onto the task of calling 911. I call 911 and go back to the Ford to continue helping my coworker. We stay there until EMS arrive and they take over we hop back into our truck and go about our day. A few days later, we come to find out that the woman driving the Ford, had rear-ended the other car due to her reaching down to turn down the radio and in that split second; her and her children lives changed. I, personally, have not experienced any of my family members driving dangerously. My friends and I often did the classic idiot high schooler activities such as driving too fast for our own good. We would only partake in that if we knew no one else was around and did our best to be safe about it. Steps that I personally can take to help make the roads safer is to slow down. I hardly ever speed. The only times that I do are that if I am late for work or some other type of function. As my mother always says: “It is better to be late than be dead.”