Changing the Statistics One Course at a Time

For many new drivers in the United States, receiving your driver’s license can be an awakening to a new world of independence. However the keys to a car are also the keys to a far too common danger, motor accidents. When asked what the leading cause of death for teenagers in the United States is, it would not be surprising to hear answers spanning from disease to the use of drugs and alcohol. However, no cause is comparable to the statistics seen from motor accidents. In the years 1999 to 2006, the CDC reports that motor vehicle fatalities accounted for over one third of all teenage deaths in the United States. While the numbers speak for themselves, the true tragedy of motor vehicle accidents can be put into perspective through the fact that each one of these deaths were preventable. As the new generation of drivers in America, changing these statistics must be a priority for the future and the prioritization of driver’s education is necessary to decrease inexperienced on the road, eliminate distracted driving, and put the responsibility of driving into perspective for all drivers.

In the United States, the responsibility of operating a motor vehicle is often not prioritized, and driving education is often seen as a tedious task to complete in order to finally take the wheel. However, being so new to the art of operating a vehicle that can weigh over three thousand pounds, frequently young drivers are not experienced or knowledgeable enough to properly handle each situation on the road. Poor judgment skills are a massive risk when it comes to sharing a road with hundreds of other people, and causes decisions that ultimately result in fatal crashes. This is why driver’s education is necessary and should be a requirement in the process of receiving a license. To put the importance of driver’s education into context, it can be compared to learning how to cook. When you hand a novice chef a knife, stove, and a pantry of ingredients and no instructions, you would not expect to receive a high quality meal. Rather you would expect it to taste awful. Now take that same logic and apply it to driving. Handing someone a license would be like handing them the chopping knife, a vehicle would be the stove, and the millions of roads, road signs, road markings, and directions would be the ingredients. Like the awful meal prepared by the novice chef, you would expect the inexperienced driver to fail at driving, however unlike the chef the consequences would be colossal compared to a burnt meal. Driver’s education is the most beneficial way to ensure only experienced drivers are on the road, because when the task is accompanied by detrimental consequences such as injury and death, it is a disservice to the millions of Americans who share the road everyday to not provide quality education to learning drivers.

By having the knowledge of how to properly operate a vehicle and maintain order on the road, accidents caused by inexperience and a lack of confidence could decrease drastically, but that does not limit the other factors such as distractions. Distractions on the road are everywhere, and can include, but are not limited to the usage of your phone while driving, playing music loudly, engaging in conversation, and the usage of drugs or alcohol. Statistics from 2022 show that nearly 1 in every 4 motor vehicle accidents in the United States were caused by texting and driving. In the context of the modern day where almost every American owns a smartphone, and teenagers are reported to have an average of nine hours of screen time each day, this statistic is much more frightening for the future of new divers. Thousands of Americans could provide evidence for these facts, including myself. I have been involved in numerous instances of danger on the road, but notably there was once where I was a passenger and the driver decided to text while we began to enter the highway. I contribute that moment to my increased anxiety while driving, as I remember repeatedly asking the driver to put their phone down. I believe prioritizing driving education would not only provide knowledge on the skill of driving, but also provide the facts and awareness of how dangerous distractions like texting can be. If each driver understood the importance of keeping their phone out of their hands, keeping music and conversation low, and avoiding drugs and alcohol at all cost before taking the wheel, thousands of lives could potentially be saved. Driver’s education would be an exemplary source to showcase the facts about distracted driving to all who seek to obtain a license, and integrate a shared knowledge among society about the threats of distractions when operating a vehicle, creating a shared goal to eliminate these risks.

With the points stated above, it is clear that driver’s education is essential to decrease the risks involved with driving in the United States. Knowledge and awareness are key to creating a nation of quality drivers, and ultimately the goal of driver’s education should be to put the responsibility involved on each individual who gets behind the wheel. The question is, how do we make the most use out of driver’s education to ensure each participant comes out of the process with the commitment to their new responsibility? To start, we could ensure that driving education is accessible, and that it is not a process locked behind barriers such as economic status and learning difficulties. By providing programs that are cheap, or even free, and are easy to find and register for, the number of individuals who sign up and complete a driving education course would increase. The next step would be to ensure that lessons are designed to not only teach students about road signs and vehicle functions, but that it thoroughly explains how a driver should act while driving, and also discuss the dangers of driving. This could be done by providing a step-by-step guide of how to avoid distractions, or how to react in situations deemed dangerous. Then students should be provided the facts about risks while driving, such as the statistics discussed before. These steps could ensure that students are receiving a quality education in driving and begin their journey on the road with the knowledge and confidence to handle any situation. However the effort cannot come from the driving education programs and legislation regarding driving, but it is up to each individual who uses the transportation system in America to ensure our country improves from the current conditions. We can do this by implementing habits such as making use of the do not disturb feature on our phones while driving, following each road rule, or not drinking or using alcohol before taking the wheel. Individually we could make a large difference in the safety of our roads, but as a group and society we could make an even larger one. If we work together to encourage road safety, take care of each other when we know someone is unable to drive safely, and promote the seriousness of driver’s education, we could possibly change the statistics for the future generation of drivers.