Benji Boyd, Sophomore
Alongside hot Dunkin coffee and an insistence on wearing flops, driving on bad roads is a classic Massachusetts winter tradition carried on throughout the generations. However, for new drivers learning to parallel park on sidewalks heaped with ice, the experience is not nearly as glamorous as it sounds.
As a teenager beginning to learn to drive, I’m finding that the understanding of the roads I gained after sixteen years of being a passenger are completely separate from the skills you need for driving. Watching as cars take sharp turns around curbs piled with snow and crawling up hills covered in ice fails to relay how stressful these conditions are for new drivers.
What adults who have been driving for years fail to remember about being new to the roads is how much trial and error is involved in the learning process. When I’m in the driver’s seat, I’m constantly worrying about how much to turn the wheel, or how far I am from the curb, or how much pressure to put on the gas. For experienced drivers, these things have become second nature, and it’s hard for them to remember a time when they could obliviously drive down the center of the road or oversteer as much as I do.
For a lot of teens, the first step to seeing the road as a driver is taking Driver’s Ed, a thirty-hour classroom course that prepares students for their permit tests and driving lessons, and teaches them the general rules of the road. Aside from videos featuring teens straight out of Stranger Things getting their lives ruined by drunk driving, or soap-documentaries about Florida moms battling over an accident law suit, Driver’s Ed teaches students pretty much everything one can learn about driving without actually getting into a car.
Though Driver’s Ed is useful in many ways, most of what is learned is just for the written exams required to get a license. Most real-time drivers can attest that they don’t get out of their car with a tape measure every time they park near an intersection. However, it’s important to understand the proper safety procedures required to be a responsible driver before getting in the car. Parent drivers can forget how dangerous driving is because they do it everyday, only to be reminded when their kid gets behind the wheel.
I know how stressful it can be for the passenger in a learner’s vehicle, because I wouldn’t want to sit next to myself while I’m driving. The reassuring thing is that according to driving instructors, most teens make similar mistakes. While it may utterly confuse parents to watch their kids oversteer, or stare directly at the hood instead of straight ahead, these are actually pretty common habits that new drivers tend to adopt before learning otherwise.
It’s useful for adults, even those who aren’t parents, to remember what it was like to first get behind the wheel. Though I’m told driving is like riding a bike, and you can’t ever forget once you learn, we all had to start by wobbling around and spinning in circles. Likewise, all drivers have to start by making mistakes that must be infuriating to other drivers on the road. Afterall, it’s not that hard to take a left turn, is it? (It is).
Though teens do have a reputation for being generally kind of annoying, I think its safe to say that after learning about how a guy got his spine ripped out in a car accident in Driver’s Ed, we’re not actually trying to be bad drivers. Especially around this time of year, when the roads are twice as dangerous as usual, it’s important to take it slow and learn proper driving form before trying to match the speed and fluency of experienced drivers. All of this is to say that driving is a journey everyone takes, and it’s important to appreciate all parts of it. And please don’t honk at me when I’m struggling into a parking spot – I might cry.