Why We Need To Reform Drivers Education

The dangers of driving never really occurred to me when I first received my driver’s license. My parents did very well in training me on how to be a defensive driver, and I felt confident in my driving ability. However, I learned that it is the other person that you have to look out for. Nowadays, people on the road are so distracted. Whether it be a phone call, text, or social media notification, everywhere I look people are looking down while driving. This is terrifying to think about, especially when you take into account that texting while driving makes a crash 23 times more likely to happen according to dosomething.org. Something needs to change, and it can start by better educating drivers on the dangers of distracted driving and making the process to obtain a license more rigorous.

In driving school, at least in my experience, we kind of breezed by the topic of distracted driving. It is sort of funny, because my sister is now in driver’s education and the amount of kids I see distracted during their class is alarming. Her class is online through zoom, and most of the kids will have the class up while doing something completely different, taking their attention away. I believe people these days do not realize their life is potentially at jeopardy when they take a second to check their phones. Kids are receiving their licenses after only 10 hours of classes and a driving test. For comparison, in Australia it is a very lengthy process to obtain a full drivers license. You must first obtain a learners license and log at least 120 hours of driving and 20 hours of night driving. Then, you must obtain a P1, which requires you to pass a practical driving assessment. This PDA consists of a 45 minute on the road test where you are instructed to perform various everyday driving tasks, and once completed, you will receive your P1. You have certain restrictions for a year’s time, and as long as you follow these rules you will receive your P2. After holding your P2 for six months, you then obtain your full driver’s license, which would be the equivalent of holding a drivers license in the United States. This rigorousness proves to be effective, as per 100,000 people in Australia on the roads there are 5.3 related fatalities each year, compared to 12.4 in the United States. This proves that if there are more solid requirements to obtaining a driver’s license, then there will be less fatalities due to accidents overall. We need to focus on changing driver’s education and the process to obtain a license.

I was personally impacted by distracted driving when my good friend, John, was killed in a head-on collision. I remember that I was having a great day, and I had just entered my first semester of college as a freshman. I was laying down when I received a call from another good friend, telling me what had happened. I was completely devastated and had no words. Seeing pictures from the accident, meeting with his parents after the fact, and visiting the crash site all took a huge toll on me. I actually found pieces of his car still on the side of the road, and I recovered a piece of his broken tail light. Ultimately, it was ruled that at some point, my friend had crossed over the median and struck an oncoming car. The elderly woman in the other car also wound up passing away while being transported to the hospital. After attending his funeral, I took a step back and realized that one small mistake or one distraction can be life changing, not only for you, but for others on the road. Since his accident, I vowed to always take driving seriously and make sure to pay attention when I am driving. I practice this everyday by making sure I am always set up before I start driving. I put on my playlist, put directions in if I need them, and start driving. If I have to do something phone related, I pull over in a safe location to quickly reply or call back if need be. I have found that these are really simple steps to improve my driving safety, and others should 100% agree with me that these are doable and necessary.

In conclusion, we as a whole need to focus on driver’s education if we would like to see a change in overall road safety. For my license test, all I had to do was drive down the road, make a left turn into a parking lot and reverse park. I mention this because it is simply too easy to obtain a license in the United States, and that is reflected by our absurdly high amount of highway fatalities. There is no reason we should have almost as many deaths per year from driving on the highway as there were in the Vietnam war. Once we start to reform the certification process, only then will we see a change in overall driver safety. At the end of the day, everyone on the road is trying to get from point A to point B and it is our responsibility to ensure that we are not the cause of a life changing event.