Manilyn G.

Bacatan
Admin Aide VI
Land Transportation Office – National Capital Region West

Empowering Youth thru Knowledge on the Road

Road Safety is something important that has to be followed at all times to ensure
the welfare of drivers, passengers and even pedestrians. However, lacking the idea of
road safety measures is critical. “Risk comes from not knowing what you’re doing”, and
it is very unfortunate that our roads are filled with unaware motorists, all of whom think
they are doing the right thing. Well in fact, motorist especially youth are lacking the
knowledge in traffic signs, rules, laws and regulations as well as defensive driving,
which are all component of a Road Safety Measures, thus, resulting to millions of road
crashes.
The idea of safer roads in the community is awareness, having a knowledge on
traffic and how to drive safely to save lives. According to the study of World Health
Organization (WHO), someone every 24 seconds with a total of 1.35 million deaths are
due to road crashes around the world each year and 30% of those deaths are youth
ageing from 15-20 years. These can be attributed to teenage driving, they are more
vulnerable to injuries due to their age bracket, they tend to be more aggressive and they
lack experience and knowledge in driving on the roads.
In the Philippine setting, when you aged 16 years old, you can know apply for a
student permit, eventually after six months, you may opt to apply for non-professional
driver’s license or wait for a year to have a professional driver’s license. Thus, at a very
young age, you can have the privilege to drive and use the road. Moreover, most of
them, only learns driving from their parents up to even friends. Thus, missing
understanding on road safety awareness and defensive driving skills, likewise, good
behavioral driving attitude.
Therefore, our fight for safer roads must definitely starts with teenagers, being
the big contributor to millions of road crash incidents. We can attain to have a safer
roads by empowering the youth thru introduction of Road Safety Programs in our
education system, prioritizing Junior High school students, as their ages are the ones
vulnerable to accidents. Likewise, this will serve as a preparatory stage before they
apply and have license to drive. It is vital to educate them while they are young,
teaching them the value being aware on the roads, equipping them knowledge and
driving skills for a sustainable safer roads in the coming years.
The aim of education is the understanding of traffic signs, rules, and laws as well
as good behavioral attitude on the road. These things will give our future to have a
responsible and discipline drivers leading to a safer roads. Empowering youth thru
knowledge and skills in driving can make a big difference in the roads.
With the privilege and awareness makes our roads safe and crash free.
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