Driver Education Initiative Scholarship Essay

The importance of education in driving cannot be understated. The obvious benefits of warnings for drivers, like which signs mean what and that the lines on roads have meaning, and they aren’t just dotted or solid on someone’s whim. There’s also the little habits that wouldn’t exist without someone mentioning, like clearing the floor of the car before driving so that nothing gets underneath the brakes, or checking the mirror every 10 seconds to make sure you know what’s going on behind you. Without proper driving education, a driver would be less informed, and therefore less safe on the road. Even with a good education, an individual can do more to improve road safety. 

There are many steps which can be taken to reduce the number of deaths in driving. People can adhere to laws more strictly, like no distracted driving or no driving under the influence. People often let themselves slip, and that’s not okay for everyone else on the road. This also applies for aggressive driving. It’s easy to become aggressive in a hurry, but those habits should be exceptions, not habits. If there was more personal accountability from people, then driving would be a lot safer. 

On the societal level, there are so many issues that can be dealt with. For example, while police quotas are illegal, harshly enforced productivity goals are not, which function fairly similarly and have the same issue of bad driving only being punished at certain times in a day/week/month. Also public transportation is lacking, which then puts people in positions where they would need to drive even if they shouldn’t be driving, like needing to get home after drinking. And there’s the level of civil engineering and zoning issues. Since there’s only a few places commercial infrastructure can be built, it tends to be built far from housing, which necessitates driving. Mixed-use housing could help make roads safer, but those problems would require quite a bit of legislation, which is significantly harder as an individual to change. 

My mother isn’t from the United States. Growing up, I watched my mother drive with more aggression than a hungry honey badger, make countless ill-advised turns, and understand speeding laws to be speeding suggestions. In my early teens, I would have rather run a 5k than drive with my mother at the wheel. I learned to drive as a response to this. While she would be flying down the highway at 85, I would seldom go one or two over the speed limit. I’d wait for a large gap in the flow of traffic before turning into a parking lot, whereas she would take much narrower gaps. I would drive with every rule in the book. Then I went to mexico. 

Before going, I thought Mexican drivers would be similar to American drivers. We’re right next to each other, so there can’t be much of a gap. I stepped out of the airport to see a driver nearly run over a pedestrian to cut over 3-lanes and U-turn over the median. We went to get a rental car, and then my mother’s driving was put into context. Her ill-advised turns were some of the safest opportunities on the Mexican roads, and she was one of the most patient drivers I saw in mexico. 

Going there made me realize that my mother isn’t a bad driver, it’s just that the culture of drivers in Michigan is very different to the culture she learned how to drive in. It also made me realize that the culture around driving is just as important as the rules when driving. 

And there’s my biggest weakness in driving, which I am trying to fix slowly and carefully. While I drive in the lines and follow every sign, there are times where doing so would be abnormal to the drivers around me, and giving them the unexpected surprise would put them in danger. Rules are important, but the people around me are equally, if not more important. If everyone on the freeway is going 10 over, I’m not going to stick to 10 under, instead going the speed limit at the minimum, and judging from there if I need to go three or four over to match the expectations of the people around me. Or if someone is obviously rushed, but I have the right of way, I’ll let them go first. I’m still working on improving my pragmatism in driving, but I hope it’s making the road safer for myself and other drivers.