My Fathers Driving Habits

Ever since I was young, I have always witnessed unsafe driving practices by my father. At the age of 6, I remember telling him to put down his phone and concentrate on the road or to focus less on lighting his cigarette and more on the busy environment in front of him. This would lead to arguments and me being told to not tell him what to do. It is important to note that my father is a firefighter and would respond to dozens of accidents on the highway that were caused due to distracted or impaired drivers. As human beings we have a strong tendency to believe we are invincible and that what happens to someone else, won’t happen to us. My father held this attitude; despite seeing countless lives ended because of reckless driving, he never thought that he could be in an accident due to reckless driving. Thankfully, my father has never been in an accident because of his distracted driving tendencies but the possibility is always there.

When I finally had the ability to drive on my own, I was always hyper aware of the environment around me because of the potentiality that other drivers could be driving recklessly, distracted or impaired. To consider the fact that driving has ended the lives of so many, because someone has chosen to drive dangerously is devastating and important to observe. Our parents are our role models from a very young age. It is from them that we learn our earliest bits of knowledge and gain our first experiences, so seeing my father risk his life and the lives of myself and my youngest brothers with his distracted driving habits is truly frightened and I am glad that I had other role models who taught me that how my father would drive is improper and dangerous.

Here in Ontario, it is common to take drivers education courses. Most take this course to lower their monthly insurance and to be able to drive independently sooner but most forget to appreciate how many lives these courses can save. Between the in-class lessons and the in-car training, drivers learn the importance of focusing on the road and learn about the severe impacts that their decisions make. Though these courses are expensive, they are worth every penny because they can save the lives of so many other drivers on the road. Driving is a concept that most people view as a very normal part of life. It is what gets us from point a to point b and once learning how to do it, and mastering being able to operate a vehicle, we are able to become comfortable with driving being a normal concept. Once we become comfortable, it is so easy to lose our self-discipline of utilizing proper driving skills, eventually leading to dangerous driving. It is important that no matter how much we drive and how normalized it is in our lives, we still recognize the power that we hold when behind the wheel. My mother made me take a drivers ed course and I dreaded every minute of it. I sat through the in class lessons, being intrigued about information I had never known about road rules. When it came time for the in-car lessons, I was so nervous that I had picked up on some of my fathers bad habits and had become too comfortable behind the wheel. My instructor taught me everything from the power that my vehicle holds, to the rules of the road. These driving lessons gave me confidence that I would be a safe driver, unlike how I was originally taught by my parents. I am not going to say that my parents are bad drivers but there is room for improvement when it comes to their safety skills.

To conclude, being able to drive offers great freedom. It gives us the ability to pretty much go anywhere, makes daily tasks, like running errands, easier and has become such a normal part of life, that we often neglect stipping and considering how much our actions can truly create consequences for our own lives and others when we are drivers. When behind the wheel, there is a forgotten pressure that we must remain conscious of. However we act when driving will not only impact our life but also the lives of everyone else in the car and all of those in cars around us. Not only will these people be directly impacted but the friends and families of those driving, could lose one they love, which then impacts their lives. Dangerous driving can lead to death, but also physical impacts and or mental illness due and trauma. Death is obviously a very serious impact but physical and mental impacts will also alter the course of someone’s life forever as well. When I think about dangerous and distracted driving, I think about the stories that my father has told me about rescuing people from their destroyed cars whom ended up on the wrong side of the road because they were on their phones or about the one car accident I witnessed as a child where a drunk driver almost killed a car containing a young family. Instances of dangerous driving are never ones that we think we will experience or play a role in, until it does. Humans are so quick to break the roles once becoming comfortable with a particular skill, however it is extremely important to always view driving as a concept that can end the lives of many. It is not until we all individually choose to accept that driving is incredibly dangerous that the high numbers of fatalities due to driving, reduces.