Name: Elizabeth Desta Woldeselassie
From: Hampstead, MD
Votes: 0
Your
late for work. You know it’s a long drive and if your late one more
time you’re going to get fired. You turn on the engine and pull out
of you driveway. You hit the gas, the only thing running through your
mind is an image of the pink slip on your desk when you arrive. You
can’t let that happen, you won’t let that happen. You have spent
too much of your life devoted to this job to allow that to happen.
You make a sharp right ignoring the stop sign and see a giant truck
plowing down the street. The next thing you know the whole world is
upside down, and then, you slip into silence.
This
is the fate of nearly 40,000 people every year. And I can tell you
that they weren’t thinking to wait a few seconds before turning or
look both ways. So many people forget that driving is dangerous, but
in order to save the lives of so many individuals in the future we
have to remind them of what it means to be in the driver’s seat,
and that starts at the beginning.
Educating
drivers on the dangers of driving is crucial, but in order for
drivers ed class to be remembered, it needs to be impactful
and resonate with people. When I asked my friends, who had already
taken drivers ed what it was like, they couldn’t say much about it
other than it was something that you had to do. So, in turn I didn’t
expect much out of it. However, when I arrived for my first class it
wasn’t at all what I had expected I learned a lot about the rules
of the road that I never really noticed until then. I hear stories
that reinforced the dangers of driving and learned for the first time
what defensive driving was. It was in that class where I learned what
it meant to be in the driver’s seat.
I
have been lucky enough to have never been in an accident, but there
have been countless times where those closest to me have. Whenever I
hear that someone has been in an accident my heart drops and I think,
Oh my God, this can’t be real, its not fair why them.
It is in those moments when I am reminded that this is not a joke or
a game, driving is serious, and people need to understand the dangers
of being in the drivers seat.
To
prevent driving related deaths adults should consistently be
enforcing the fact that driving is dangerous and a privilege into the
youth. They should also be reminded that while anything can be a
distraction when driving. To prevent accidents automobile companies
should look into ways to eliminate distraction on the road. With
these reminders of how serious driving is will help people understand
what it means to be in the driver’s seat, once we have done that
then we have started to save lives.
