No one wants to receive that call

There
is no worse feeling than getting that call. You’re sitting at home,
popcorn bowl in your lap slowly slipping as you feel sleep slowly
taking you. But you can’t fall asleep yet, you’re waiting for
your husband to get home from work. All of the sudden your phone
vibrates with a call from an unknown number. You answer it.

The
man you were waiting for isn’t
coming home, he died in a car accident.

I’ve
been in one very minor car accident, the lady behind my mom and I
looked down at her phone, took her foot of the break, and her car
slid into the back of my mom’s brand new car. My dad and sister
were in a much worse one, one in which my dad’s car was slammed
into a pole by a driver who just wasn’t paying attention.

His
car was totaled.

Driver
education is extremely important. Every driver that is on the road
should go through training before they are trusted with driving.
Driving today is made out to be this right that all teenagers get.
The feeling of walking out of your house on your 16th birthday, the
car waiting for you in the driveway, your smiling parents handing you
the key to the car, and to your freedom. That being said, every
driver needs to be educated not just on the rules of the road, but of
the dire consequences that could happen if those rules are not
followed.

It’s
hard to figure out the best way to reduce the number of deaths.
States have rules in place to prevent people from drinking and
driving, from texting and driving. Every person has to go through a
driver’s test to even get the license. I know multiple people who
were failed on their first driver’s test from making small
mistakes, that seem menial, but done at the wrong time could lead to
a catastrophic accident.

I
think in order to reduce the number of deaths, people need to be
educated more on the effects of their driving decisions. What could
happen if they text and drive. The effects of those decisions on
their family, and the other driver’s
as well. We need to be taught that the people in the other cars all
are going somewhere, and they put their trust in us to be good
drivers and help them get to their destination safely.

I
know that I can always work on paying more attention. Sometimes I
happen to get distracted by a passing object, or by the radio
suddenly playing my favorite song. My parents tell me I should be a
defensive driver, that I should drive as if everyone is a terrible,
distracted driver. I think if more people drove like that, they’d
be more alert, and maybe we would see a difference in the numbers of
accidents.

But
this isn’t
a one, or even ten person job. We all need to work to be better
drivers.