Are Lakes Drivers Good or Bad?
February 2, 2023
We asked our Lancers if student drivers here at Lakes are good or bad. Here are the results of our survey.
Good drivers
11
Bad drivers
26
Why are high school drivers so bad these days? Considering that Washington is one of the hardest states to get your license, this is perplexing. How is it possible to have drivers speeding at over 50 miles an hour in a parking lot. Of course the most reasonable answer is that these are all new or somewhat new drivers who may have gotten their license fairly recently. Without the practice, it is common to nearly crash or not be comfortable with your vehicle.
Another reason is peer pressure from friends. Many people convince friends to speed, race, ride with no seatbelts, which is causing many accidents, car wrecks, and serious injury . The Center for Disease Control explains the top reasons why high schoolers are such horrible drivers.
Finally, phones these days are one of the most used tool in America, mainly used with high schoolers who are known to be addicted. Phones while driving can cause a huge distraction, juristically increasing rates of crashes. Almost 3000 high school students in the United States alone have been killed, with 227,000 injured in motor vehicles crashes in one year alone. High schoolers now know that their peers are bad drivers, so why are we not trying to drive better? Ways to help teens be more safe and effective while driving are having a parent-child agreement with driving rules, avoiding driving at night, always wearing a seatbelt, avoid driving other people around unless needed or you feel ready. Driving is a privelige and we must earn the ability to be behind the wheel.
Michael Arkell • Mar 31, 2023 at 6:22 pm
Speeding does not mean bad driving. Who ever wrote this obviously thinks speed kills. Let me explain something, I work in autobody tech, I specialize in tearing apart crushed and crashed vehicles, I have also been in multiple car wrecks over 60mph. What kills people is the sudden change in speed, acceleration or deceleration. Modern cars can survive a crash up to 40mph to an instant stop, not all drivers and passengers can. Sometimes we hear of people surviving 150mph+ crashes. A good driver can speed through a parking lot at 80mph and not hit anyone or lose control of the car when he knows his vehicle’s limits and the roads limits, a bad driver will crash even at 25mph and most likely kill someone or injury them. Now, judgement is what 50mph in a small empty or a large busy parking lot says about one. Poor judgement is what that is. Same goes for how people sit in the left lane on highways and go the speed limit and not pass anyone, that’s actually illegal yet cops don’t enforce it. There is alot of illegal stuff that people do that doesn’t hurt others, and alot that does. In the end doing 40 in a busy parking lot, is the stupidest thing you can do, a kid walks out, and even with my reaction time of ½ a second, and my brakes which stopped my car from 70mph in 4 seconds, that’s not enough time to prevent severe injury or even death. Poor judgement is not knowing what is okay and what isn’t, good driving skills means you can control the car under the conditions you are driving in. They taught this in WA drivers courses, yet in the end, just like the article says, we still have idiots driving. The solution is to require drivers ed, and remember ¼ the people on the road did not learn how to drive in our state or country.
Former Student –Michael Arkell