Distracted Driving: How Bad It has Gotten

Driving was always a scary thing to me. It seemed so overwhelming to see all the instuments and information to absorb even just from the passenger’s seat. Now that I’m driving and making long trips, I can see just how much ground I had to cover by myself. Having enough energy to drive is something that I believe is severely overlooked as a cause of driving fatalities, and I think that aspect of the learning process is left out a lot. I had to recieve instruction from my parents after watching a trucker documentary about keeping yourself energized while driving because my state mandated education didn’t cover it. When I drive, I hold myself to a higher standard than most because I respect the vehicle I am in. All of my peers at school drive cars their parents bought for them, not ones they buy themselves. I believe this correlates directly to accidents on the road because of the lack of personal investment in the vehicle. When you own your car, you don’t want to treat it irresponsibly because if you do, you will have to pay for it. Having personal responsibility and investment in your vehicle is an easy way to be a more cautious driver, even unconsciously. Having cheaper options for car buying that make it easier to purchase a car and have ownership of it will greatly increase both a teen’s mental health as well as lower their risk for an accident.

Most driver’s education programs discuss distracted driving, but not the specific categories that fall under the umbrella of distracted driving. Sleepy driving, impaired driving, texting while driving, these can all be called forms of distracted driving. More education into how dangerous distracted driving can be will directly impact the number of deaths from young teens who don’t know any better. Disctracted driving can be a direct link to more deaths, but more teens should know just how much the weather and time of day can impact their driving. Rain and nighttime, while pretty manageable separately, can be a huge hazard to someone who is not used to driving in those conditions, creating a nervous driver who is far more accident prone than somebody who is educated on the risks and knows what they are doing.

However, I believe that more extreme learning times must be implemented, not more extreme types of verification. Since the only questions on the tests are related to either signs or vehicle maintenance, that is all people study for and therefore all they learn. An expanded testing curriculum with more lenient passing requirements and more questions to answer would make new drivers less inclined to “bomb” a test they knew they weren’t ready for and would increas the scope of knowledge a driver would have to know before becoming roadworthy.

I believe that all these reforms are necessary to the driver’s education program because of the deaths that I have both witnessed and heard from others. Several college students, one of them an Alumni from my high-school, died in a car accident due to distracted driving at night a few weeks ago. My godfather had a car accident when he did multiple 360’s down I-95 because of a drunk driver. My parents have both been in a severe car accident that destroyed their car and ingured them, requireing a huge amount of money to be set aside for that one-minute-long mistake. Even if accidents don’t physically harm you, they financially devestate you. Your insurence rate goes way up, and you have to pay for your vehicle. I believe that the risks of an unsafe driver are underestimated and underappreciated based on the country’s state driving laws, which for the most part remain unchanged from the mid 20th century.

I believe that more stringent driving laws would make all of us up to par on the road because of the normalizing that has recently taken place. Speeding, driving with beer in your car, all these things have become normalized in our society, and it needs to be fixed with more strict legislation. People die from car crashes, and still more people get financially ruined by them, so maybe it’s about time we do something. Airlines have, so why not cars? I guess 34,000 lives lost every year isn’t enough for some lawmakers to do the right thing.