Texas students living in rural areas in Texas are more accident pron than students living in the busy urban areas. The recent study of the 2006 road fatalities by the Texas A&M University System says that 65 percent of the road fatalities happened in rural areas. Wow! Less people on the road and more accidents!
I grew up in pflugerville, Tx. which was half rural (east side) and half urban (west side) . I lived in about the middle and most of my friends and I would drive over to the rural side when we wanted to drink alcohol. We knew the "country roads" wouldn't have any police men on them. Usually four to five kids in one truck with music loud and about a six or twelve pack per person. All we needed was a full tank of gas to keep the party going. The roads are dark, bumpy, and curvy. It is very easy to understand how rural areas and roads could be more dangerous for student drivers than the highly populated, and a lot of stop light urban roads have to offer. Young students just getting their drivers license tend to believe that the worst thing that could happen to them is getting a traffic ticket, with no regard that they could die if they are not fully attentive to the road and driving well. Drinking and driving is a obvious reason for accidents, but even if someone isn't drinking accidents are more likely to occur on rural roads because of the dark, narrow, and terribly maintained roads with ditches on each side. There really isn't any room for error for young drivers that tend to like to drive fast.
Placing officers on the rural roads could reduce the amount of drinking and driving but that would require more police officers which most cities don't want to pay for. I suggest we take some of our road maintenance money and add more lighting and more signs that tell the inexperienced country driver what is coming up ahead of them
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2 comments:
Wesley made some really valid points regarding student drivers and rural roads. He also confirmed that this is a problem when he admitted that he had done practically everything the article outlined that young student drivers do: drive with too many people in a vehicle, underage drinking, speeding and loud music all after dark. A couple of things he didn’t include but has a large part in these incidents is cell phone use and text messaging while driving and drug use, speeding and street racing. The article quoted a student that admits to texting short messages while driving, but waits until a stopping point to text longer messages. Cell phones are such a huge part of our society especially among teens and yet parents forget or don’t enforce rules of the road regarding cell phones. Teen drinking and driving is also a very dangerous activity, not to mention illegal. Most teens simply think they won’t get caught.
Not all rural roadways are curvy and bumpy however, some are long and straight, allowing to driver to speed more than they should. It can lead young drivers to come up on cars unexpected corners too fast.
I agree that more lighting and street signs could be used, but what about increased education in the driver’s education classes or high school about the dangers of drinking and driving and cell phone use? The article talks about an increased advertising campaign to improve awareness, I think that many different venues can be used to achieve this. Parents also need to be very involved with knowing where their children are and making sure that they obey the laws and teach them consequences for not following the rules.
Unfortunately, this will probably always be a problem on some level because young adults will always feel invincible, challenge rules and just take things too far.
Wesley did a nice job of relating his personal experience into the facts of the story, but was weak in coming up with suggestions for solving this epidemic.
The writer of this blog mentioned such an interesting topic which is a big problem that everybody is facing. He made some really persuasive points regarding student drivers and rural roads. He also introduced every common behaviors that young student drivers do such as driving with too many people in a vehicle, underage drinking, speeding and loud music all after dark. However there are a couple of important mistakes that he didn’t mention are using cell phone, doing make-up, even drug use…Most of the students nowadays do not contact by talking any more, but by text messaging. The article outlined a student that admits to text short messages while driving, but waits until the stop point to text longer messages. Teen drinking and driving is another dangerous activity which is illegal.
Besides, he also mentioned a few problems that rural students have while they drive such as the difficulties of the road and too many traffic lights which would influence their driving ability. He realizes the finance obscurity of the government; however, the solution that he offers is weak. Because traffic lights do not solve the problem, completely.
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