Driving Safety Concerns

Let’s race down memory lane for a second. Review your teenage years in particular. What moment pops out most? Is it the hormones? Is it the cracking of your voice? Or even your first date? I’ll bet that you’ll have a memory from at least one of those things. But you also probably have one thing in particular that sticks out predominately: your first car. Maybe it’s the air that blew on your face as you bustled down the road that was the most vivid. Or maybe it was the feeling of being free on all practical counts in getting from one place to another. Maybe yes, maybe no. But what you probably remember at least somewhat is what happened before you got your first car: drivers’ education, you know, the constant push the instructors often had on driving safety in particular. More often than not, you probably also remember how maybe you and others didn’t really care about the point the instructors were trying to make. You might’ve thought: “yeah, like I’m going to be an unsafe driver; I don’t know why people would do such things in the first place.” What’s funny is that that was exactly what I thought when I went through driver’s ed. But boy was I proved wrong.

Ironically, I was proved wrong right at the end of my drivers’ education, during the hands-on portion. You see, when I was driving with my instructor, I actually was driving parallel to another intersection when I heard a loud braking from that intersection. What I saw in the rear-view mirror was horrific, and it still sends shutters down my spine to this very day. You see, in that intersection, a driver of one car decided to run a red light, but did not see a minivan traveling in the cross-direction. What happened? A side-impact crash – with the forces strong enough to roll the minivan and make it right itself back on its wheels again. But the most striking, in my opinion, was me actually seeing the driver in the minivan flailing about somewhat in the driver seat after the collision. That event really made me feel more adamant about raising safety concerns with any driver that I can reach – which, if it applies, includes you, dear reader.

Over anything, always wear your seatbelt. I don’t care if you think that it’s kind of tight, and from that uncomfortable. I’ve got news for you: it’ll be a whole lot more uncomfortable for you if you get in a serious crash and are not wearing a safety belt. Do I really have to say to you that the driver in that minivan was wearing a seatbelt, and that it was probably the only thing that kept him or her from being thrown out of the driver’s side window into the middle of the intersection? Do I really need to say that to you? I saw it with my own eyes. Oh, and another thing! One of my sister’s own friends would’ve been killed in a crash had he not restrained himself before the incident! Oh, and I’m still not finished! I myself would’ve been injured if I wasn’t wearing a seatbelt when my mom pulled out of a parking lot into a road without seeing a car right in front of her! Obviously, for these personal experiences alone, it is justified to always wear your seatbelt and to check to see of others in the car are restrained as well. You never know what could happen, even at the most ironic of days, like last day of driving practice, when that incident with the minivan occurred.

Though I previously thought that it would be common sense for the broad majority of drivers to know that driving erratically is incredibly risky in behavior, I no longer think that is so now, based on, you guessed it, a couple more experiences. You see, when I was a freshman in high school, I couldn’t drive myself to and from school due to state laws, so I often had to resort to walking to and from school. But the intersection that I always had to cross at the time was pretty chaotic, as sophomores and the above upperclassmen generally drove themselves. When I crossed, I was often honked at, yelled at from the (driver’s) windows, and a couple of time, and can hardly believe it myself, almost run over because people didn’t know how to give me a brake, apparently. In my opinion, that is incredibly immature behavior for someone who’s at the same time supposed to be responsible for guiding a ½ hunk of plastic, glass, and metal on wheels at deadly velocities. But this sort of behavior isn’t just pertained to freshmen pedestrians, like me. For instance, just last year we had one student in our high school who actually managed to run his car into the side of the campus building, as a result of him apparently trying to scare his friend by driving very fast in the school parking lot. Dumb idea, in my opinion. So, with that said, it should be obvious that drivers shouldn’t act like idiots at the wheel.

In a nutshell, cars are tools, not toys. With that said, they should be treated as tools. By that, I mean that the user should always follow safety precautions just as they would on a, say, table saw. And by safety precautions, I am obviously referring to the wearing of seat belts, as well the practice of safer overall driving procedures enacted by the driver.