The Importance Of Driver’s Education and Changing Things Up

Something I see among my generation and the next one is that people think that driving is common sense, just something you can do on instinct or “like riding a bike.” While they are a tiny bit correct with some parts, like stopping at a stop sign, going the speed limit, and not driving up the curb and hitting things. They are wrong for the majority, there is so much that goes into driving that is beyond average common sense and it’s far from “riding a bike,” and even then most people have to learn how to ride a bike before it becomes an instinct unless you are one of the special people that can hop on a bike and go. But aside from this thought process being ridiculous it is dangerously common and being encouraged on the internet. People are suggesting that driver’s education is not needed when it absolutely is. It is a life-saving class that teaches you things that are not simple common sense and I am speaking from experience and general observations of how older people drive vs younger people. Without driver’s education and especially that period where someone is observing you driving, the chances of you failing at driving and injuring someone or worse greatly increases.

To start, driver’s education can reduce a multitude of avoidable deaths in some very simple ways. One thing is driver education teaches new drivers about all of the road signs, even ones that it is unlikely they will ever come in contact with. There are so many signs that we see on a daily but truly do not recognize what they mean until you are tested on actually getting behind the wheel. For example the narrow bridge sign. The narrow bridge sign is a yellow diamond that has a road with a narrow middle on it. I am not quite sure how to explain this other than saying driver’s training either gives you a new sense or it turns your senses up to 11. Once you start learning in driver’s education and actually get on the road with a teacher, you start noticing things you’ve never noticed before like the sign and other people on the road. I think that gaining the ability to notice people on the road is one of the biggest things that can prevent deaths because half of driving is noticing people. Driver’s education teaches you how to control yourself when driving so that when you do notice someone driving out of control or they just aren’t paying attention, you can protect yourself and make the best choice of action to cause as little damage as possible.

Now driver’s education teaches teenagers that they should try not to drive with any of their friends and to drive in basically complete silence. But I disagree with this idea. For the friend part, I think it mainly depends on what friend you are with and how you act together. But Driver’s Education does go over that and they say something along the lines of “If you have to drive with someone make sure they are a safe passenger.” A safe passenger won’t distract you from driving and if possible aid in making the drive safer. But I personally think that driving in complete silence for my generation is dangerous and more likely to cause a driving-related death. Driving alone and in silence makes it easier for someone in my generation to blank out and go into autopilot, especially once you have been driving for enough time that you are comfortable driving and overcome the initial fear associated with driving. Especially on the freeway/highway because you are driving straight for a long time and doing the same thing for a while. This is something I have started doing, the music keeps me from going on autopilot while driving when I am on a path that I know like the back of my hand because I drove them so much. While I believe this is a good idea it’s important to recognize what you are listening to and how you react to it, don’t play anything that is going to get you super riled up because that is dangerous. It can leave you not paying attention and reacting more aggressively than normal. Speaking of aggression, something that could help all drivers is to have someone that you drive with often watch you drive and then ask them if they feel you are an aggressive driver or experienced any type of road rage. An aggressive driver is really dangerous, they can cause numerous deaths or accidents, but often people don’t realize that they are an aggressive driver or experience road rage. Hence having someone watch you drive is a good way to see this because then you can take a step back and try to become a calmer driver. After all, road rage can cause you to react too fast and take unnecessary risks to get somewhere. As a woman there is also the worry of pissing off a man because you immediately react in a fit of road rage and that man follows you to hurt you in some way, this can happen to men too but it is more likely to happen to women as seen in the news. People are wild in this day and age, and you never know who has a gun and decides that you cutting them off is the last straw.

Now I fortunately have never been in any type of serious accident, I have had a couple of new driver mishaps like getting a little too close to a car while parking and not taking notice of my speed. But a step that I have been taking to become a safer driver is to slow down, it’s easier to go faster than it is to go slower. I started driving in high school then I took a year off because I went to college and just didn’t drive while there at all. When I got back home and I started driving again I now noticed that I was going a lot faster than I used to. Nothing like going 50 mph on 25-35 mph streets but on the freeway I was not scared of it anymore and was speeding up and trying to get around people I felt were going too slow. It actually wasn’t until I ran up on the curb trying not to hit another car that I paused and said “I am going way too fast.” So I slowed down and started pressing the brakes earlier than I used to and set a limit for myself on the freeway because sometimes you need to go a little over and even when I go over I try not to be at that speed for a long time.