Conny Morrison: Young drivers need instruction

During my high school years at Cedar Ridge in Hillsborough and since I graduated in 2008, we have lost two teammates and good friends from my high school soccer team, a member of my senior prom group (though she was technically an Orange High student), a classmate who made us laugh from our elementary years up, a friend’s new crush and my high school boyfriend’s friend and classmate.

These six young lives taken by car accidents are the ones I have a personal connection to, though I know of more from seeing the Facebook posts and hearing the stories. Each loss has been heartbreaking and traumatic for my classmates and me.

When I think about driver’s education in the state of North Carolina, I think of the need for more funding, for better instructors, longer teaching sessions and subsidized attendance.

I don’t know that improved driver’s ed could have made a difference in any of these horrible accidents, but I would rather take the chance of investing our state’s money into keeping its young people safe. I hope our state government will, too.

This story was originally published July 2, 2015 at 5:17 PM with the headline "Conny Morrison: Young drivers need instruction."