As a new driver, show good character by driving with integrity
Driving is awesome!
It is one of the first experiences of actual freedom that many teenagers get to have. Whether it’s driving to the store for milk because your mom asked you to, or picking up a sibling from a friend’s house, the excitement of driving yourself around is still exciting.
Being the one in the driver’s seat is empowering, knowing that you are the one in control of the vehicle. After spending your whole life seeing your mom or dad in the same seat, you are in that seat now. You finally feel like an adult. However, with that feeling comes the just as powerful responsibilities that may not be taught to us.
Unfortunately, these responsibilities are not always seen as such a big deal when teenagers are driving. This results in the fact that every year, about one third of teen deaths occurred in motor vehicle crashes, and 16-year-olds have the highest crash rate of any other age.
As a new teen driver, I don’t want to be a statistic. By sticking to the few rules I made for myself, I want to prove that at least this teen can drive well.
According to the Secretary of State, each year in Oregon, an average of 39 deaths occur due to distracted driving and 110 deaths due to drowsiness.
Don’t drive when you are tired. Being tired while driving, in some cases, is considered more dangerous than drunk driving. Your reactions take much longer than when you are not fully awake, which could result in young drivers not being able to hit the brakes quick enough to avoid a collision. One way to avoid this is to make sure you get a good night’s sleep before driving to school in the morning. Maybe eating a good breakfast will help. Since we are still new to driving, we need to be more alert than adults who have been driving for years.
For teens, phones are hard to put down: The biggest distraction for us teenagers in the car are our phones. We are so used to checking and playing on them while our parents drive us around that it’s simply a habit to check it when we hear the notification sound go off. This habit becomes dangerous when our parents are no longer the ones in the driver’s seat.
There are a few ways to avoid the temptation of checking your phone while driving. The first is to practice proper communication. This means letting your parents (or whoever may be trying to contact you) know where you are. If they know you’re in the car, then they shouldn’t bother you (no one should). No one texting you means that the buzzer won’t go off, tempting you to pick up the phone. There is even a feature on my phone that acts like a “Do Not Disturb” option. This means there won’t be any sort of ring or notification if anyone does text you. They’ll just get a message letting the person know that you are driving.
In the end, it all boils down to two things: character and integrity. Who are you when nobody is watching? This is something that I learned back in first grade when I first joined cub scouts. It still applies to my life to this day.
- What is your character when you are in the car alone?
- Do you have integrity to drive responsibly when your parents are not there with you.
- What will you do when nobody is there to tell you to reduce your speed, don’t roll through a stop sign, don’t speed up when you see a light turn yellow or to leave the phone alone when it beeps?
Ben Moreno is a sixteen-year-old Junior at Beaverton Academy of Science and Engineering who enjoys writing and hopes to study law after graduating.
