Name: Samuel Deike
From: Macomb, IL
Votes: 0
DMV Essay
Driving safety is incredibly important and takes tens of thousands of lives every year. While this essay may not stop the accidents it’s still worth writing about because there may come a day when I can give my suggestions to others in places of power. So without further ado I will start my typing.
When starting driving, you have to start with driving school before you do anything further. The driving school is all meant to teach you the rules of the road and how to be properly safe while driving. They teach you all the road signs and even some of the signs that can go onto vehicles, for example the slow vehicle sign can be very useful when you aren’t used to being around vehicles like tractors or even carriages. There are all the videos that help you visualize what the book is saying. A video showing how stop signs are supposed to operate is very useful as they are everywhere except the highway in every city and town.
To reduce the number of deaths around cars I believe it is really important to let people know the stories of the people who have been impacted by these auto deaths. Using people’s emotions to help them think about the lives they may be impacting is one of the most effective ways to get through to people.
One of the stories I know is my friends who got hit by a car on his way home from school. I would normally walk home with him but that day I had gotten a ride home from my sister. While he was walking across a street that isn’t always busy, it does have higher speeds than the other residential streets around, while midway across the street a car had pulled out of one of the side streets and started down the road. The driver must have been preoccupied with something else at the time because they didn’t notice him crossing the street and hit him going around 40 mph. While I wasn’t there to witness it many other people were there and there were a ton of posts talking about how somebody got hit by a car and they had done a couple of rolls before being over. None of the posts were pictures so I only assumed it wouldn’t be anyone I knew so I ignored it. I don’t remember quite how I figured out it was my friend, I believe that his mom or somebody in his family had told me he had been hit by a car but he didn’t have any broken bones or anything changed (which was incredibly lucky).
To be a better driver there a lot of things you can do. For one we can keep properly following the rules of the roles and paying attention to the drivers around us. Because there are some times when you have to be a defensive driver and just let people do their things because it is more important to be safe by letting somebody do something that they may be wrong to do, than to be right. Because technically you would be in the right legally you would still have to deal with the crash, which involves many many layers that just aren’t worth going through if you can avoid it. So for my part I can keep using my turn signal, and keep my wits about me while driving and that includes not driving under the influence.
Driving around Semis, motorcycles, and other non-car/truck vehicles can be difficult at times and I’m sure you’ve heard or are of somebody who is scared to drive around these. Mostly Semi trucks than motorcycles but nonetheless both need extra precautions when driving around them. To further prove my point that extra caution is needed with these vehicles, we can think of their stopping time and distance. Semis are going to need extra time to stop because they have to stop all the weight they are carrying as well. Motorcycles may technically be able to stop faster but they also have to stop safely. If a motorcycle stops too fast they will go flying over the handlebars or crash by sliding across the ground, either way if they stop too fast they will be in danger. Every type of car is going to have different ways you should act around them and that you can only learn through experience.
This closes off my little typing experience. I appreciate you reading through my experiences and the ideas I may have for the future. I hope some of this can be more flushed out so that people will take more interest in being careful on the road because it’s not how fast you get there but the journey in which you do.