Speeding Persuasive Speech

Austin Lara

Kellie Seals

AVID

12-7-15

Stop on red Imagine you're about to get on the school bus from a long day at school. You're exhausted from all the work you had done that day and you're not paying much attention to the world around you. The bus is across the street waiting with open arms, waiting for you to sit down and rest all the way home. As you take your first step you realize a car is driving down the path way you're walking; you’re most likely thinking it's going to stop, so you keep walking. On your way to the bus you realize that the car is not stoping, so you hurry to the bus and try to escape the danger. You take a look to see how much longer until the car gets there and before you know it a car races passed you just
barely grazing your toes. You now realize that this incident could've injured you to the extreme, or even worse, ended your life. Now you're thinking if he would've just stopped and taken time the whole incident could've been completely avoided. The overall reason why we stop on red is to reduce the many lives lost. Speeding through a stop sign or a red light could lead to extreme injury or in worse cases death.
According to Claire Ricke, a recent survey found that drivers committed more than 78,000 illegal passing violations in a single day. This evidence show just how dangerous a normal day is and how much danger you could be in just by getting on a bus. It’s scary to know that you're not always safe, even when doing something as simple as getting on a bus, but this can all be avoided if people would stop being in such a hurry and slow down to think about the consequences of their actions. Most people would say that it's almost impossible to stop because when you're in a hurry you don't think as clearly and you aren't as observant, but that’s not the case. It is possible to think and slow down when you're in a hurry, and I know because I've done this myself. It was a test day and I had already woken up late with very little time to spare. I was disorganized, in a hurry, and I was barley making it. Everything was so rushed that I wasn't thinking clearly until my sister told me to calm down and get every thing I needed then to meet her in the car. I managed to calm down, and I got every thing I needed and met my sister in the car. I’ve been in a hurry many times, but I still find time to think and get every thing done. Being late to work or an interview is not worth another person's life, so slow down and think before you
act. The numbers of deaths is outrageous all due to a ridiculous cause such as stoping when being told to.
Evidence of the number of fatalities of running red lights was found on MDOT (Mississippi Department of Transportation) website. “According to data from the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA), a total of 7,799 lives were lost from red light running between 2004 and 2013 across the nation.” I know the numbers are small compared to some of the other leading causes of death, but that number could be smaller or even non-existent if we just paid attention and slowed down. More evidence was found on MDOT’s website about the fatality numbers. “In 2013 alone, 679 people were killed and an estimated 127,000 were injured in crashes that involved red light running.” This number shouldn’t be that high. Slowing down for a bus is not that hard or time-consuming it’s one of the easiest things you can do no and lives should be lost at all. These numbers should be a wake up call for you. It’s a topic that shouldn’t even be relevant to the world because of how easily avoidable it is. Just remember, next you see a bus at a stop stop your vehicle and wait because whatever event or place you have to go to can wait. No event is worth someone’s
life. More than 36 percent of drivers continue to run red lights despite that 55 percent of the participants said it was very dangerous and 73 percent acknowledged that running red lights is unacceptable and dangerous, they keep doing it, but why? That’s the question everyone is still asking, but we still don’t know why people continually keep doing it. This is what I meant about slowing down and thinking about the current situation, if we just stop to think our vision becomes clearer and we become aware of our actions. In conclusion, bus stops and red lights are incredibly dangerous situation’s, but they don’t have to be if we all just slow down and think about our actions that we are planning to do. So stop when told to and you could save someone’s life and remember stop on red.