Name: Shuo Xing Zhou
From: Sacramento, California
Votes: 0
Driving isn’t hard, but
driving with the right attitude is. A poor attitude towards driving
is where the issue of safety lies. On the road, people tend to become
exponentially carefree, and often trapped into a fantasy that they
are invincible until they’re not. Drivers may have easy access to
adequate education, but further steps must be taken in terms of
teaching new drivers the right mindset when getting on the road.
More
teenagers are learning to drive, whether it be for a convenient
commute to school or the freedom of driving. Regardless of the
reason, more teenagers mean more people susceptible to the
invincibility mentality that breeds risky roads. Not all teenage
drivers are reckless, but the tendency of reckless driving is
commonly developed because young drivers believe their judgment to be
superior to others and perceive their skills as beyond experience.
Again, driving isn’t challenging, everyone who learns to do so is
capable of it, but when teenagers personalities reflect their driving
behavior, this only means trouble.
When
it comes to drivers ed courses in high school, this opportunity
to teach students the right way of thinking shouldn’t be taken
lightly. The primary material being taught is ultimately trivial and
a considerable waste of time. Although much of the information is
fundamental knowledge that must be learned, the very tedious details
are a bit excessive. Knowing the legality of how long wooden planks
can be when hanging off the back of a pick-up truck is practically
worthless knowledge to the average teen. Instead, the time should be
spent on taking steps to teach students and new drivers the right way
to behave and think when getting behind the wheel.
Vehicles
are not merely utilities that allow you to get from one place to
another very quickly. They are also examples of lethal weapons. The
drivers ed system should be placing a major emphasis on
developing cars as potential weapons. In fact, this method of
thinking should be ingrained in children once they start learning
about cars such that the future generation is more cautious on the
roads.
People
often feel anonymous inside their cars because they start associating
other cars as exclusively that, not other humans. We need to be
taught to remember that there are actual people in other cars, and
just like everyone is not the same in personality and interaction,
drivers are not the going to be perfect either. People need to stop
focusing on what others are doing wrong, or making the excuse that
“other people can’t drive”, because, in reality, everyone
simply has a different approach when it comes to driving. Some are
hastier and some are more cautious, we can’t change this.
Developing the mindset that commute takes time no matter what and
being hastier to shave off a few seconds, thus jeopardizing the
safety of others by disregarding communication on the road, could
likely result in another one of those tragic statistics for vehicular
accidents.
