Thank you to everyone who participated in the 1st of three scholarship contests for the year. We are grateful to everyone that took the time to write, research, and share intimate stories relating to the importance of driver education. Some of the essays dealt with being involved in a motor vehicle accident and dealing with the tragic aftermath. Some of stories, sadly, even dealing with loss of life due to a motor vehicle crash. Sharing your story could potentially save a life by introducing how grave the consequences of driver distraction can be, and we applaud you for taking the issue seriously enough to educate others about it.
A topic which came up often this round was the need to have driver education and training be an ongoing process, not just to obtain a driver’s license, but in order to maintain one’s license. This makes a lot of sense and it should be something for us to work on introducing. The elderly are being required in many states to retest for both written an driving tests, but it does make sense to have such testing for everyone on the road, so as to keep our knowledge and skills fresh. This, among many other suggestions were very insightful and we hope will seep into the overall consciousness as to how we can reduce the number of injuries and deaths as a result of driver distraction. We will do our very best to promote them.
And now to announce the winners for this round. Selecting the winner for staff favorite was difficult to say the least. In the end, each staff member selected their favorite, and one essay was randomly selected from the staff favorites. It was the only way to select our favorite, as there were so many great submissions. For staff favorite, Sebastian Bergen, “The Societal Toll of Road Rage and How to Mitigate its effects”. Sebastian’s essay was very timely. Its’ topic dealing with how our emotions can be a source for driver distraction leading to an accident, or possibly even road rage, as a result of stress or emotional instability. Because of the current Covid 19 pandemic, all of us have had to adapt to a new way of living. This can be a cause of great stress, that in turn can lead to increased driver distraction, getting easily angered at other drivers while driving, and even driving more aggressively as a way to release tension. All these responses can be a result of stress, or other emotional factors, which can lead to being in a road rage type of incident; by either provoking the incident or by being distracted enough to potentially cause an accident, and possibly have another driver react aggressively. We thank you Sebastian for sharing your intimate story, and reminding us that driver distraction is not always external but often times is a result of what’s going on inside of us, and how important it is to be in tune with our emotions when driving.
For most shared essay,with a whopping 16,988 shares, Terence Mhar Ordonio, “Life is Just Once in a Lifetime so Drive Safely With It”. In the essay, Terence shares his insight on what is needed to ensure safety on our roads. Thank you for sharing your story Terence, great job!
Great job to the both of you and congratulations!
We say this every year, but it bears repeating. Ideally there would be no need for scholarship contests, and each and every citizen would be assured a free college education.
As you know, a high school degree does not go too far these days, and to limit one’s access to a good education and their God given potential because of a lack of resources is truly unjust when we have the means to provide otherwise. So, this is also up to you —as we go into an election year, to declare that you wish for a college education be granted as a right for all and not just an option for some. You all will soon be or are now of voting age and your views can be put into law to bring about a better future for your generation and generations to come. I do hope you will get involved in bringing about this change. Bless you all. Thanks again to all participants.
