North Carolina Car Accident Lawyer Blog

This blog intentionally focus a lot on the problem of how to curtail North Carolina car, motorcycle, and truck accidents. If we can collectively find ways to make these crashes less common – and less lethal – we could save lives, prevent injuries, and reduce all sorts of indirect costs and stresses on the state’s infrastructure, insurance companies, and, most importantly, the families of North Carolina.

But how do we do so? What measures can be implemented to reduce accident rates? What decisions could we make as conscientious drivers to protect ourselves and others on the road?

One subtle but perhaps extremely useful solution is repetitive learning.

To qualify for a driver’s license in the current system, you typically need to take a drivers education course, pass a test, and go through a few other logistical and legal hurdles. But once you have your license, unless you do something wrong or become very elderly, it can be years if not decades between reinforcing your education.

In some sense, that’s crazy.

First of all, new evidence is constantly emerging that, if properly incorporated into a North Carolina Drivers Education curriculum, could help drivers behave more safely.

Second, the human brain learns best by repetition. This is true of little children, who famously retain more information from watching the same episode of “Blues Clues” five days a week than from watching different episodes of “Sesame Street” five days a week. (You’d think that kids who watched different episodes would retain more information, but the evidence suggests the opposite.)

This is true for adults, as well. Think back to the last time you really, really, really wanted to learn something. You likely didn’t read over whatever you needed to know once and then forget about it. You likely spent some time, studying, restudying, testing, and retesting yourself. If there is something we really want to get done in our lives, we persevere. We constantly bring it up in our thoughts, conversations, journals, and so forth.

Well, don’t we all want to clamp down on North Carolina car accident rates?

If so, doesn’t it make sense for us to engage in Drivers Ed more than once in every 20 blue moons?

Sure, instituting more regular Drivers Ed tests and courses could be costly and possibly annoying. We all have lives to live, and few of us want yet another bureaucratic encumbrance. But wouldn’t the benefits of incentivizing more frequent Drivers Ed relearning and retesting far outweigh the costs of a minor annoyance every five years or so?

The moral here is that creative solutions abound, but we need to open our minds to seemingly outlandish suggestions (e.g., let’s all take Drivers Ed again… and again… and again…) if we want to see substantial progress on the safety front.

For help with specific legal questions, connect with a North Carolina car accident law firm.

More web resources:

Blues Clues versus Sesame Street

Repetition is key to human learning