Here it is. This is in regards to yet another news article regarding traffic in my area (Seattle, Washington).
This will be a short rant.
I’ve long since concluded that our government, at least at the state level is continuing to put Education behind everything else.
Rather than do what I believe is necessary to really solve the root of the issue (the actual cause of traffic) the Seattle mayor is going to do what most all government officials do, throw more money at a problem and hope it prolongs it long enough that they don’t have to deal with it until the next Mayor is elected.
What’s the real cause of traffic? You and Me! Yep, it’s the drivers on the road. From what I can tell it’s mostly uneducated drivers that cause a lot of traffic, from following too closely (causing accidents), merging onto the freeway at 30mph rather than at 60mph. Simply going too fast in general or going too slow in the passing lane, not to mention not moving over (out of the way) of faster traffic. All of this and more causes traffic jams and results in unwarranted accidents.
I strongly believe that a healthy dose of driver education could fix a majority of these issues. On top of that, I firmly believe that we should have stricter licensing tests and more required classes, as well as yearly or bi-yearly (as an example) testing which would hopefully be more rigorous than a simple eye exam.
One argument I’ve had to combat against after posting up my ideas on my local news station website is, “Our country isn’t ready for mass transit, people NEED to drive to get places and there isn’t enough public transportation in place to harbor those who wouldn’t be able to get a license or who lose a license well early in their lives.”
Yes, a valid argument. However, thanks to this great country we live in a majority of our economy is based on Supply and Demand. This means that if there was suddenly a high demand for public transportation (helping the elderly who lost their licenses get to places like the grocery store on a weekly basis, for example) then the supply of these services would also rise. Thus making that argument a moot point. Actually, that might help the economy as well, creating more jobs.
Well, there’s my short rant on education is our past. We keep putting education behind us and hope that throwing a few hundred million dollars at problems will fix the issues. I don’t believe this is the right way to go. I think spending just a fraction of that amount of money on driver education would go much further and save many more lives (less accidents, more responsible drivers, etc).
Hi, Not sure that this is true:), but thanks for a post.
Elcoj
Maybe it’s just because of where I live. They removed the WASL test from high schools (basically a standardized test that you have to pass in order to graduate). On top of that, the Seattle school district is actually trying to change the rules so that a D grade is now passing. Previously D and F were failing.
The reasoning for the change to D grade as passing? I’ll quote (paraphrasing) “To better prepare our children for college.”.
Yes, you read that right, they want to make D grade a passing grade to better prepare our kids for college. How that makes sense I have no clue, but those were the actual words coming from the Seattle School district board.
My only thought is that they want kids to feel that they are succeeding and not worry so much about actual grades. But this is more like a slap in the face to all the teachers that actually try to teach meaningful content to their students.
Your state/county is not the only state with these problems with the decline of driving etiquette and courtesy. Living on a rock in the middle of an ocean you see people using the passing lane/fast lane as a “I’ll drive 5-15mph under the posted speed limit.” Not only does this cause traffic, but it also becomes dubbed as an “accident waiting to happen” due to someone else’s inattentiveness.
Standardized testing was eliminated after the “No Child Left Behind” policy was put into place, or is that just my imagination? I mean if you look at it from this stand point of, “Excuse me sir/ma’am your child is too smart you need to tell them to knock that off because you’re making the rest of the kids look bad.” You’ll begin to see the decline of the education in 50 states.
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