Name: Nestor Santiago
From: Santa Monica, California
Votes: 0
Safe driving can save lives
Safe
driving can save lives
“With great power
comes great responsibility”. If you were to ask anyone what that
meant to them they would all think of superpowers world changing
abilities. However most fail to recognize that great power is not
something that only one person can wield every generation, or only
something that one the percent are faced with. Great responsibility
is something that we take on every day in the form of waking up and
doing the right thing in order to create a safe community. Or not
being wasteful in order to preserve our environment. Although doing
the right thing and environmental awareness is important they all are
things where you can see the impact when a large group comes together
and does their part. However I think one of the greatest day to day
responsibilities one can have is safe driving. A car is not a toy it
can do great things like get you places near and far warm you or cool
you down but it can also ruin someone’s life or even end it. If
someone is hit by a car going at a standard 40 mph they have about a
90% mortality rate. I would even go so far as to say that everyone
had either been in a car accident or knows someone who has been in
one. I myself am an avid cyclist. I bike every day to school and on
the weekends I enjoy taking a longer ride. Within 2 years of riding
my bike I had already been involved in 4 accidents. Thankfully they
weren’t big but they were still 4. What are we to do as a nation to
prevent the 38,800 lives lost in 2019 due to car crashes. I believed
the answer isn’t to make driving tests harder and longer, the
answers is to make driving test encompasses things that are “picked
up” along the way like why to do when you see an angry driver or
how to back out of an busy Costco parking lot where you might not
even be able to see an entire car bc of a larger one parked right
next to you. However there are also things we can do to help lower
the number of car related accidents and deaths, like hold seminars on
how cyclists can stay safe on the road, as well as how pedestrians
can be more safe by paying attention rather than 100% trusting the
lights or just putting attention in general. Car accident have been
something that everyone has had to deal with since cars were invented
and even though we have come a long way in terms of safety and
regulations, I believe there are still more things we can do both on
a personal level and at a grand scale but one things for sure each
and every driver can save or end a life and that is a common
responsibility we all share.