Reflection Blog:

I wanted to learn more about a new bill in Utah regarding red lights. I have always been told that Utah drivers are the worst and I have seen some bad drivers here but are we really that bad or just different? Why would we make things more confusing by enabling people to run red lights when failure to yield is one of the leading causes of crashes in Utah? What is being done to improve the safety? What can be done? How do our regulations differ from that of other states? I believe that one person can make a difference and I would like to inform others of the real problems and how we can improve the safety of roads here in Utah

While researching more about this bill and interviewing some people I recognized that there are many causes of reckless driving. The biggest thing that I found was that speeding is a big contributor to crashes here in Utah. Personally, I am part of the problem. Everyone is always in a rush and I believe we need to make lifestyle changes to be on time. I find when I am not in a rush I am a better driver, I am calm, polite and I even slow down a ton. When I am in a rush however, I find myself irritated, speeding, and not very polite.

Writing this story was kind of hard for me to write because I am part of the problem and I didn’t want to put in my own bias on the topic. I do believe that we should have stricter laws, more law enforcement and new regulations. There are some cool things that other states are putting into place like speed capturing cameras that send tickets to those who speed by them. I thought that this was an interesting idea. Although with its own problems, it seems to be a good way to reduce people from speeding in these areas. Another interesting thing that I would like to research more that would have been cool to add to the story is automatic self-driving cars and the future development of this technology. Self-driving cars could potentially reduce cars from speeding because you could set a limit for the roads that the cars are driving and they would detect that and only go that limit. This however causes us to rely on technology more than our own reacting skills, which I think if implemented correctly could be an amazing thing for most people.