Eyes on the Road, Hand on the Stick
The roadways of our nation are lethal, and all of these distracted drivers with big, fast, and powerful hunks of metal are weapons of mass destruction. Every year, we lose millions of lives to vehicular-related accidents, and the number one reason, according to GJEL Accident Attorneys, is Distracted Driving.
Distracted driving occurs when the driver’s attention shifts to something other than the operation of the vehicle in which they are driving. This can cause many accidents and road hazards. Distracted driving can happen for various reasons, from texting and driving to even just glancing at a cool car you saw pass by. When driving a vehicle, you must be 100% focused on the road and your surroundings.
People often claim that driver education does nothing but gently tell you, ‘Texting and driving is dangerous,’ and that’s it. Improving driver education could very well assist in the reduction of distracted driving. If we implement some exercises and scenarios to give students a hands-on example of the effects of distracted driving, we could teach the students the horrific outcomes. An excellent way to perform this safely is through Driving Simulators. Driving simulators can be somewhat pricey, but for what they can offer, they are very much worth it. These Simulators are much cheaper than repairing cars broken or wrecked by students. They can offer a harmless learning experience and can let you understand the outcomes of positive and negative reactions safely, and they are also capable of playing specific scenarios to help train a driver’s muscle memory. These Simulators have become a part of driver education for race car drivers; Dirt Fish Rally School in the state of Washington has begun using them as a base for all of their programs. It has proven very effective over the past few years. Simulators save the school’s vehicles, money, and maintenance. They also allow drivers to get used to different cars due to these simulators’ outstanding customization. With these simulators, students can simulate many scenarios where distractions will occur, but if they get distracted, they will fail. This can help train the students to better understand the importance of undistracted driving and how they can prevent themselves from all distractions on the open road.
The main distraction nowadays is our phones. Our phones distract us from work, school, and even driving. The text can wait. If we could implement new ways in our driver education programs to train students to lock their phones away in a spot where they are out of sight, it would be a significant improvement; we could even train drivers to make sure that when they are passengers to make sure that the current driver is not allowed to be in possession of their phone. The passenger giving directions would be less distracting than looking at a screen and taking your eyes off the road. We should focus more on training our drivers to always ensure their phone is ‘out of sight, out of mind’ when they sit behind the wheel of a vehicle.
A massive piece in reducing distracted driving is Manual transmission style cars. Many people will tell you that these cars are way too challenging to learn to drive, and they have a valid point. But, I consider this transmission style crucial in drivers’ education. These cars can help people keep their attention on the car and road. When you drive a manual car, you need to devote your attention to everything coming up and use your head to operate the car correctly. No matter what it does, every part of the road needs to be thought out and mentally prepared so you know what to do ahead of time. You may need to prepare for an upcoming corner, in which you must slow down, shift down, rev match, and turn. After that turn, you would need to accelerate to get back up to your speed and upshift while timing the release of the clutch to prevent it from jolting. This ensures that the student’s attention is directed toward the road at all times, with no time or even limbs to allow distractions. This type of car requires the use of both feet and both hands to operate everything at once: One foot on the gas and sometimes the brake, one on the clutch, a hand on the steering wheel, and one that alternates between the shifter and the steering wheel. Many will say that putting a beginner in one of these cars is too risky and challenging. Luckily, this is another situation where these simulators come into play. They can safely train the students to understand the concept of Stick-Shift cars, so it is a breeze when they get behind the wheel of a real Stick-Shift car.
Another great point is that you better understand the car and recognize the feeling when something is wrong. This helps to better understand what the car is doing and how it operates while putting the driver at the center. Knowing how a vehicle operates is crucial to know when it may be time to take it in for service or an inspection. Not knowing when something is wrong with the car can cause issues that cause mechanical failure and accidents. Being familiar with this can help students understand when something is off and what they should do before it is too late.
Learning this skill should be mandatory as you get a better sense of how to operate a car while getting extra functions to have more overall control of the car. Gaining a better understanding of the car can help in many ways and give students improved driving and mechanical experiences so they know what to look and listen for. Knowing all of the operations and controls in one of these cars is tricky but very engaging and rewarding for the students in a positive way. If we could implement the use of manual cars and improve our anti-distraction section of driver education, I believe that we could really lessen the number of accidents drastically and make our roadways a much safer place.
References
25, M. R. | O., DirtFish Rally School Media | June 11, 13, D. E. | O., Tara Gee (2023, October 1). Home. DirtFish. https://drive.dirtfish.com/
Top 25 causes of car accidents: Exploring the major factors. GJEL Accident Attorneys. (2023, November 24). https://www.gjel.com/car-accident-lawyers/top-causes-car-accidents
Counterintuitive Fall 2024 
Before I read this, Puffer, I’m concerned that the two sources Referenced are the first two we’ve seen as readers (assuming the order of reading is Definition, Rebuttal, Causal). No matter how insightful your observations, the course prioritizes Research over Rumination. You’re going to need to demonstrate that you consulted some sources.
No offense to GJEL attorneys, but they don’t even say where they got their number of total accidents in America, and their links are all self-referential (leading to other posts on their own website, never elsewhere). Their claim that distracted driving is A leading cause of accidents, let alone THE leading cause of accidents, appears to have been invented.
And I have no idea what you might owe to the DirtFish website other than the claim that they use simulators to train drivers.
I feel I’ve endlessly repeated that the point of a Rebuttal argument is to refute the strongest possible counterargument to your Hypothesis. You chose this:
—Pretty weak.
—If that’s the strong counterargument to yours, what was yours?
—Yours would have to be something like: “Driver training already produces drivers who not only KNOW HOW to avoid behind-the-wheel distractions, but who also PRACTICE distraction-free operation.”
What you say sounds reasonable at first, but for me, a quick glance at Google maps while driving to an unfamiliar destination is WAAAAYYYY less distracting than getting vague hints from my wife about what her phone is telling her about my next exit, where it leads, whether I need to be in the right or left lane to access it, what number exit it is, how many miles away it is, . . . .
Purge your work of 2nd-person language. This may not be all of it, but it represents the collection that pops out: