Necessity for People Made Laws to Effect Safe Driving

With respect to any activity, societies, governments, and legislative bodies must create regulations to ensure that citizens do not create adverse situations for themselves and others while participating in these activities. We find examples all around us; in banking, home construction, and even sports. Driving is an activity which requires a wide range of regulation because the act is by nature dangerous and life threatening. If we analyze driving simplistically, we see that a driver is operating a vehicle weighing an average of two tons, which is comprised of metals, composites, glass, fuel, accelerants, and noxious chemicals at speeds between 25 and 100 miles per hour. And, most driving is done at close proximity to other motorists which suffer from all manner of physical, psychological, emotional, and analytical impairments.

My own personal experience in learning to drive was mostly a positive process. My father began allowing me to drive (illegally) when I was approximately 13 years old, in the Pocono Mountains in Pennsylvania where we vacationed every year. There were roads that were typically devoid of any traffic at all in that area. It was there that I learned about traffic signs, speed limits, and driving etiquette. While it was a great experience, in hindsight, it is not something I would do with my own children. When I became of age to get a learner's permit, my father would give me lessons in the industrial and commercial areas near liberty state park. There I learned parallel parking and how a vehicle feels and reacts at high speeds (there were large empty parking lots where I could speed and maneuver the vehicle in ways that I could not on normal roads).

While these were great learning experiences for me, they also demonstrate some reasons why "people made" laws are essential to promote safe driving. With respect to individual choices and risks that people take (such as allowing 13-year-olds to drive), people made laws protect drivers from their own poor decisions. Most early teenagers cannot grasp many concepts of safe driving and "natural laws." Ideas such as inertia, force of impact, conscientious driving, etc. will be largely unknown to immature minds. Additionally, people made laws assist motorists in better coping with adverse driving conditions created my natural conditions. For example, traffic signage assists us in rain and fog, and can even alert us to areas with large populations of deer. Furthermore, laws help prevent drivers from operating vehicles that are unfit for the road. Inspection and registration laws ensure that vehicles have satisfactory breaking and signaling systems, among other things. These issues demonstrate a necessity for regulation to protect against controllable and uncontrollable variables in the driving environment and individuals' propensity to make poor decisions regarding their driving and vehicle maintenance.