There’s No Way

“There’s no way.” The three words that flitted through my consciousness are more distinct in memory than the visual record of our light turning yellow and the car coming from the opposite direction making a left turn directly into our path. Was their car gray? Was the driver male or female? Was the pole that was now outside my window ten inches in diameter or ten feet? Was that horrible crack the sound of the airbags going off or the sound of our car’s frame twisting?

When all was again still, the details came into painful focus, including the anguish on the sixteen-year-old driver’s face as she looked at me through the haze that follows an airbag detonation and cried, “I’m sorry,” though it wasn’t her fault. She then squeezed out the driver’s side door as I wedged myself out the passenger side. There were eight feet between the electrical poles, and our car had been miraculously propelled dead-center between them.

The number of people then surrounding us on the curb clued me in on how bad the crash had been. I may always tear up a bit when I recall the stranger in the black apron, obviously coming from her on-your-feet-all-day job, who engulfed the driver in a giant, steadying hug and repeated, “You’re okay. Don’t worry. You’re okay,” until she saw me inch around the other side of the car. “Oh good. You’re with someone.” I’ve always wished I had caught the printing on her nametag as she tenderly turned the shaken driver over to me.

I’ve given much thought to what could have prevented that accident. I believe the cause was two-fold – an education lapse and distraction. It turned out that the driver of the other vehicle was a young person, though not a brand-new driver. Somewhere along the way, he had never learned, or had possibly forgotten, the necessity of yielding when making a left turn, even when your light has turned yellow. I have surmised that his motivation in turning into our car was because he felt that he must exit the intersection before the light turned red, regardless of the decisions of the other drivers.

In addition, an element of distraction must have played a role. The basic instinct of self-preservation would have prevented him from turning into the path of an oncoming car if he had noticed us sooner. It is possible that he was solely staring at the traffic light, but I do worry that his attention was pulled away from the road by something else as well.

Either way, I am certain that the antidote to accidents is education. One useful tool might be a mandatory written test at ages eighteen and twenty. This would be a low-cost way to reinforce the principles that drivers learned in their original driver’s education courses. Education research reveals that “refreshers” are an indispensable tool for the retention of knowledge. Repetition of a new concept twenty-four hours after learning it, and then again years later, solidifies its place in long term memory. If the most vital concepts of driver education were reviewed in a test-review-retest format, a framework would exist for filling gaps in a young person’s driving knowledge over their first few years of driving.

This biannual schedule would also make good use of a second education technique, where didactic learning both precedes and follows hands-on learning. In other words, if drivers learned from books and lectures first, then experienced driving as a licensed driver, and finally returned to explore written answers to any absent knowledge, they would have a much more comprehensive understanding of driver safety.

Even in the present framework, however, vital steps can be taken to become safer drivers. Most importantly, of course, is to put away cell phones when driving. The best way to motivate this is for individuals to speak out to friends and family members about how they feel unsafe when the driver is texting or looking at their phone. It will always be up to young people to develop a culture of safety when it comes to phone use. I have seen long-lasting change occur when a group of friends agrees that it is uncool to practice unsafe behaviors.

The second practice that can be undertaken now to ensure safer driving is driving mindfulness. Drivers could undertake a useful exercise by vocally “narrating” their driving occasionally to brush up on their technique as well as reinforce their understanding of the gravity of the situation each time they get behind the wheel.

In conclusion, with enough education and dedication to driver safety, we might someday reach the state where we can honestly look at potentially dangerous driving circumstances, know that the other drivers on the road are educated and mindful, and instead of worrying about an accident, confidently say, “There’s no way.”