I have totaled two cars. Two big cars. I've rolled both of them over, both from the same stupid mistake of over-correction. If I had been driving cars that were lower to the ground, the vehicle probably would not have flipped over...but that's besides the point.
My first accident happened only two months after I got my license. And then the second accident happened a mere five months after that. Thank goodness I wasn't breaking the law and driving anyone else in the car when the first accident occurred.
Now, I am not making excuses for my accidents, but I wonder why they happened in the first place. Why did I attend 210 hours of driving school and 8 hours of road time with an instructor and flip over two cars? And why did I pay so much money for this instruction when I almost killed myself two months later? I think that the driving school instruction needs to be improved tremendously. In my state, if one attends driving school, you are required to have only 8 hours of practice on the road with an instructor before you can test for your license. You don't even need to ATTEND driving school (aside from drug and alcohol courses) in order to test for a license, as long as you've had your permit for six months. This seems ridiculous to me. The standards for students in driving school just aren't high enough, and this is why there are so many teenage accidents across the country. I was never taught how to handle an SUV and all of my road hours were spent driving a tiny little car.
Could driving schools have a range of sizes for their student cars? And if not, could they at least address issues such as over-correction and center of gravity concerns? Maybe it was just my driving school that was lacking in these areas, but overall, I think that the country needs to improve its education requirements and develop a more rigorous program for people trying to obtain their licenses. Driving the instructor to Walgreens during my road hours didn't exactly teach me anything...
(Edit: I should mention that no one was harmed in these accidents, thankfully, and luckily, and no one else was involved in them besides myself.)
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