European Driving

I can’t count the number of times where I will be driving or be in the passenger seat of the car and another vehicle doesn’t yield before merging into the lane. You are driving down the express lane at the speed limit of 50 miles and you assume that the merging lane knows to yield. Once in a while when the merging car doesn’t do so, you hit the brake and think, ‘well I had a mini heart attack but I was able to brake on time so it’s ok’. But what if there wasn’t enough time to break? That is why a good quality driver’s education is important. My family is from Bosnia and I’d go there all the time to spend quality time with my cousins. Let me tell you, I cannot begin to describe how well they are taught the rules of driving before the DMV gives them their driver’s license. Whenever I am in the passenger seat of the car across Europe, I feel much more at ease. In America, I pay very close attention as the passenger in the car. It starts off with, ‘watch out watch out, I think they are going to merge even though their blinker isn’t on…’. In Europe, I don’t do that. I know how seriously the community takes their driving. It is a privilege in their eyes to be able to drive, and when people don’t abide by the driving laws, they are looked down upon. So, breaking traffic laws rarely occurs. This is because a high quality driving education also taught them the importance of respecting others on the road. It’s become an agreement that if you learn the traffic laws well and so do the rest of the drivers, then we can be a healthy community. It’s the same way when someone enters a store and purchases a product. There is mutual respect. If the customer is nice to the employee, then there will be a nice response vise versa. This has been taught to us since we were in preschool but has somehow not been transferred to many drivers across America. This is the consequence of not having a high quality driver’s education.

It is true that American teens do begin driving at an earlier age than Europeans. Younger people are more caught up in their own world. It takes more than their parents or something written on paper or an old driver’s video to prove to them the responsibility they carry whenever they drive a car. Therefore, we need educated young drivers to speak to those new drivers. To speak to them about the cost and consequences of irresponsible driving. When one generation develops a healthy driving community with one another, then the next generation will also attempt to create that same healthy driving community as well. People can also influence future drivers years before they actually begin driving. Educating parents on how much their children observe their driving habits can also reduce deaths related to driving. If a child is taught their whole life to respect driving laws, then they are more likely to do so when they grow old enough to drive.

I have not been in a car accident but I have been affected by a few. The one that hit me the hardest was when I was thirteen years old and my brother’s best friend died on highway 9. It was his best friend’s seventeenth birthday and he wanted to drive up the mountains to take photographs. He drove fast on the windy road and ended up driving off the road and hitting a tree. He was dead on impact. Instead of him arriving at the door of his surprise birthday party, it was the cops telling the tragic news. The next few weeks, I would watch my brother get back from school, cry in his car while he held his friends sunglasses, one of the few things he had left from him, and walk in the house pretending that he was okay. That was one of those awakening moments when I realized how important it was to be a safe driver. Speeding is something that I feel like is not talked about enough. You don’t really realize how fast you are going until you realize you cannot make the turn or you cannot break on time for a light.

There is no full proof way of convincing someone to be a safe driver. However, this does not mean that it is not important to talk to people about safe driving. I will share my experiences on being a safe driver and encourage others to do so as well. I will try to talk to people from the heart. I’m not going to go on a huge lecture about safe driving to others, but I will tell them the impacts on what it has on other people when safe driving is not talked about enough.