Name: Brooke Winkler
From: West Bridgewater, MA
Votes: 0
Eliminate
Your Distractions!
All
across the country, there are thousands of car accidents every single
day. Adults, kids and animals are put at risk everyday just by being
around vehicles, but there are so many ways that we as a country can
prevent this.
Drivers
education is one of the programs that truly has the potential to make
a huge difference. This schooling is so important because it is
something that teenagers go to, often times, before they even begin
driving. The importance of this schooling mainly comes from the fact
that kids can learn safe driving before they get on the road, giving
them the chance to know the rules before accidentally breaking them.
Because of drivers ed, kids are able to recieve tips to help
focus on the road and instructions to better their driving.
While
there are a multitude of ways that deaths related to driving can be
reduced, I believe the biggest way to make change is to get rid of
distractions. Phones, music and food can all be major distractions
while on the road. Nowadays, with phones, texting is only one of the
ways a phone can become distracting. Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook
and music apps are all extremely popular applications that are used
even more than text. To reduce accidents related to phone use, more
phones should enable “hands free mode,” where the phone is not
useable while a car is in motion, unless it is being used for an
emergency call.
Another
major distraction is eating food while driving. With people going
from home to school to jobs, it is hard to designate time for eating.
While eating when driving is the easy way out of being late, it is
also a dangerous one. We can reduce this by making people more aware
with adds, as eating food while driving is not typically talked about
as dangerous.
As
a teenager, I have had various experiences of friends driving
irrisponsibly. It becomes an uncomfortable situation to be in a car
with a friend and having to ask them to get off of their phone or to
pay more attention to the road and less to the music, but it is more
important to be uncomfortable for a few minutes than it is to be in
danger.
To
become a safer driver and help others be safe on the road, we should
all always drive with a clear mind, as driving angry or sad could
easily distract us from paying attention to what is important. We
should all take the time to enable “hands free mode” on our
phones, so that there is absolutely no distractions coming from
electronic devices. Lastly, sometimes accidents are not our fault, so
we should always be looking around for what other people are doing on
the road, and being observant.
