Everyone Can Agree That Safe Drivers Have Fewer Collisions
The problem is, we don't always remember to be safe when we are behind the wheel. Part of our human nature and trying to live in our busy and stressful culture means that we are rushing everywhere we go and we sometimes take risks that might not normally be taken.
There Is A Disconnect Between What We Say and What We Do
Not because we are necessarily hypocritical by nature, but when we are behind the wheel, we might be in a hurry and therefore have an "incentive" to rush and make riskier driving decisions.
One of the ways that you can be a safer driver, is to provide an incentive to be a safer driver. This needs to be greater than the incentive to rush when we get behind the wheel.
How can we create a stronger incentive?
Here's one:
Take out your wallet. Now pull out the pictures of your spouse and your children. Before you get behind the wheel of your vehicle, think about them. Consider how your safe decisions behind the wheel right now will ensure that...
- You get to see them today
- You get to see the joy on their faces when you drive them to play sports
- You get to continue to provide for them by going to work
- You get to go on family vacations with them
Now consider the opposite... the "cost" of making unsafe driving choices...
- You may become hurt or killed and therefore unable to see them today or any other day
- Your wrecked car won't allow you to drive them to play sports
- If injured, you may not be able to work and may not be able to provide for them
- You may not be able to take family vacations
Imagine that any collision that you have with someone else will have the same repercussions on them -- you could be responsible for injuring someone else, keeping someone else's child from enjoying sports, ruining family vacations, etc.
As Harsh As These Thoughts Are, They Are Not Intended To "Guilt" You Into Doing Anything
But rather they are given as examples to seriously consider the cost of driving unsafely and the benefit of driving safely. With more than 120,000 collisions causing injury or death on Canadian roads each year (according to Transport Canada), imagine the number of families impacted by decisions to drive unsafely. Although not all of those 120,000 collisions were necessarily caused by drivers driving unsafely, many of them were and even a slight reduction in that number can result in happier, healthier families.
The next time you get behind the wheel, imagine your children asking you to drive safely so you can make it home to them.
