Staying Knowledgeable to Stay Alive

Driving
is something that the majority of people have to do every day. While
most people don’t think of it this way, driving is an incredibly
dangerous task that just last year resulted in around 8,110
fatalities (National Center for Statistics and Analysis). Those
statistics are not even including the amount of severe injuries or
damages that took place involving automobiles. Cars cannot be blamed
for these frightening events, however. How many of these accidents
could have been prevented if drivers were more well informed or
educated on road safety?

Nobody
plans on getting into accidents, so when they do occur they are an
immense surprise. People tend to be vastly more confident in their
understanding of road safety than they actually are, which is
problematic. If you don’t know that you are uninformed, you won’t
seek further knowledge on a subject. If people realized how little
they actually know, then we could increase the number of educated
drivers that fill our streets, making them safer.

That
being said, just because a group is educated doesn’t mean that they
will use what they have learned in real world situations. A prime
example of this is texting and driving. Everybody knows that it is
something you shouldn’t do, yet it is not a rare sight to pass by a
driver who is fidgeting with their electronic instead of paying
attention to the roads. In order to prevent this behavior we need to
find ways to further enforce these laws and regulations by increasing
the penalty given whenever somebody disobeys them. Less people will
text and drive, for example, if the price of a ticket is outrageously
high.

In
my experience, the only times I have gotten into car accidents was
because somebody was violating a law or improperly driving. Not too
long ago, I was enjoying time with my friends as we were driving
around town. As we approached an intersection, I realized that my
friend operating the car was too distracted to notice the stop sign
we passed at as we drove through an intersection. Time slowed as I
watched a black Jeep approach closer and closer towards my door, and
yet it all happened in an instant. We were then jerked to the side of
the road which stopped all flow of traffic. If the airbags hadn’t
done their jobs, we could have been another statistic. Thankfully,
everybody was fine in the end (besides the car, which had to be towed
away). That day I learned just how dangerous being a distracted
driver can be.

In
order to prevent more incidents like this, we should all call out the
people we care about whenever we see them making the wrong choices
while driving. It may be awkward to do, or you might feel like you’re
a “party-pooper,” but if being a “party-pooper” keeps my
friends and the ones I care about alive, then that’s exactly what I
think we should all aspire to be.