From Fear to Freeway

At fifteen, I got my learner’s permit like almost every other sophomore. Unlike my friends and classmates, I didn’t immediately jump into the driver’s seat. I detested the responsibility of driving and holding lives in my hands. I’d heard plenty of stories of teens being in fatal crashes; my brother even flipped his car a few weeks before I got my permit. I had a lot of anxiety around driving and thus didn’t get behind the wheel until after having my permit for over a year. When I finally did decide to learn to drive, my uncle taught me the basics. Neither of my parents had the patience or time to teach me until I could drive on the main roads without freaking out. My parents have very different driving styles, and each time I drove with them, they would tell me to drive how they do, not the correct way of driving. I took drivers ed with a private company my friend’s dad worked for. That is where I learned all the laws around driving and the proper way to drive.

Driver education programs can help prevent driving fatalities in many different ways. First, they give new drivers information on how to drive properly and legally. These courses allow teens to drive with an adult with whom they don’t have an external relationship. Many parents add extra stress to the process of learning how to drive. Drivers Education course also teaches teens what can happen when they don’t give driving their full attention. In the class I took, I had to watch several videos about safe driving and stories of young drivers who didn’t drive safely. One particular story I regularly remind myself of while driving is the story of a girl who went to get something out of her center console while driving. She crashed her car and was severely wounded. This comes back to me every time I am stopped at a light and think I have a second to grab a lip balm or lotion out of my center console. Stories like these, while often terrifying for new drivers, serve as reminders of the consequences of a seemingly trivial decision.

Some steps to reduce driving-related deaths have been taken (at least in Utah). These steps are a buckle-up law, limiting the teens on the road at night and a lower BAC than most states. Despite these measures, fatal crashes happen frequently. Many steps could be theoretically implemented and haven’t yet been. These include but are not limited to teaching defensive driving, requiring to practice snow driving (in states where it snows regularly), and rain driving. Many accidents could be prevented if everyone learned defensive driving. Not only does it teach drivers how to avoid accidents, but it also can teach how to lessen the impact of an accident.

My mom took a defensive driving course when she was sixteen. Years later, the skills she learned in that course may have saved my life. She was driving me and my sister home from a dance lesson in the rain. There was a lot of traffic, and she got stuck in the blind spot of a semi-truck. It appeared as if the semi was drifting into her lane in the rain and the dark. We are still unsure if it was, but my mom swerved into the suicide lane. With the water on the road, her car began to spin out. Using the lessons she learned years earlier in defense driving, she regained control of the vehicle with minor damage to the car and no damage to other drivers. If she hadn’t had those skills, her car would have spun for much longer. The likelihood of another vehicle hitting us or us hitting another car would go up with each second the car was out of her control. Teaching teens how to gain control of their vehicles in controlled settings is very important. Current driving education programs try to teach the theory of what to do, but doing it in a real-life situation is very different than hearing about it.

Teaching teens how to drive in adverse weather conditions is also very important. If you live in a state where it snows, at some point, you will be driving in the snow or on icy roads. Knowing in your brain that you are supposed to drive slow, accelerate through turns, pump the brakes gently if you begin to skid, and turn into the skid are all things you learn in driving courses. However, none I know of put you in a situation where you can safely practice and build those skills without the adrenaline. I was in two different situations last winter when remembering these skills and carrying them out were completely different.

The first was two months after I started driving. I was leaving my friend’s house one night after it had been raining all day. It had just started snowing and was exactly 32ºF. I didn’t think that the snow was as icy as it was. I made a left-hand turn without stopping (I was in the neighborhood and had the right of way at the particular intersection). I was driving much slower than I usually would have been, even for a neighborhood. As soon as I started turning, my car started sliding. I couldn’t remember what I was supposed to do amidst the flood of adrenaline. I slammed on the brakes and tried to straighten out. I ended up slamming into the curb and narrowly avoiding colliding with a tree. Luckily, I was not hurt in the accident, but I could have been. After this, adults told me I needed to learn to drive in the snow and laid out the steps for what to do, but I was never in a situation where I could practice it with them. The suspension in the front passenger side was destroyed. My family decided it would be easier to buy a new car. My dad didn’t want to make an insurance claim because his rates would increase. My mom didn’t want me to have a vehicle that depended on my dad’s whims, as it had already been an issue. My mom decided to work with her mom to buy me a new car.

A month later (two days after my birthday), I was in my second accident in less than six months. I was leaving my house one morning, and there was a fine dusting of snow on the ground. I knew it wasn’t deep, as I barely left any tracks behind me when I walked to my car. I got two miles from my house before I had to turn right. The light was red, so I slowed down, but it turned green before I completely stopped. I kept braking while turning and hit an icy patch with my front tire. My car was halfway through the right turn and stopped moving through the turn. Panicking, I turned my wheel as far as possible to the right and slammed on my brakes. I had learned some of the right maneuvers from the crash a few weeks prior, but not enough. I was in a car I had only been driving for a few weeks in good weather and didn’t fully understand. I couldn’t gain control of my car, and it felt like one moment I was driving along listening to quiet music, ready to have a nice quiet day with my boyfriend; the next, I was losing control, and a blink later, I was sitting with my brand new car straddling the median and a street sign falling into my hood. My car needed an engine replacement due to cracking the oil pan. I was without a car for several months due to complications with insurance and the shop we took the car to. During those months, I had plenty of time to reflect upon the accident. Whenever I got in someone else’s car, I would pay close attention, researching what I could have done differently and having my boyfriend explain controlled drifting to me. After this experience, I had a lot of time to think about the months leading up to getting my license and the two wrecks I was in.

When I finally got my car back, I was terrified to drive. If I didn’t have to drive, I wouldn’t. I would get anyone else to drive me somewhere. No one but my boyfriend pushed me to get comfortable behind the wheel again. I remember him saying, “One day, you’ll have to drive yourself somewhere. What are you going to do then?” and “What will you do when we go to college? Who’s going to drive you? You want to be the loser who’s thirty and can’t drive because you’re scared?” While his comments may seem harsh, they were exactly what I needed to hear. Slowly, I started driving more in a single day and then longer distances. I refused to go on highways or freeways even though they weren’t where I wrecked either time. My younger sister called me a “grandma driver” as I drove two miles under the speed limit and overly cautious. It got to the point that I was driving more unsafely because of how cautious I was.

This school year, I started a class where I had to drive on the freeway or take a longer route. I knew I had to overcome my fear, which gave me a reason to. Over the summer, I would go to unnecessary stores to practice getting comfortable on busy, fast-moving roads. Eventually, I started taking the freeway from my summer class to my boyfriend’s house. This was a significant achievement, giving me the confidence to go the speed limit and drive more defensively. I no longer have an overwhelming fear of driving, most of the time. The fear of driving in the snow still festers in my brain, but I have a plan for that. My boyfriend and his dad are going to teach me and his little sister how to drive safely in the snow. His dad taught him how to drift when he wanted to. This knowledge and practice have gotten him out of very similar situations to my own.

There is a glaring difference between the driver I was 14 months ago and now. At the end of last year, I was the person flying down the road, weaving in and out of traffic. Now, I drive the speed limit (or a speed safe for conditions). Seeing what happens when I think I am a better, more experienced driver than I am, I have changed to be a safer driver. No one was at fault for my crashes, but some things could have prevented it. Experiencing a controlled snowy skid while driving with an adult before getting my license would likely have changed the outcomes of both of my accidents.