In The Driver’s Seat: A Personal Journey to Safer Roads

The sun had set the sky on fire with amber and gold as my sister and I drove home from her college campus. Sarah was back for the weekend, and we’d spent the day chatting over coffee and browsing through her favorite bookstore. Soothing music played in the speakers as we discussed her classes. The familiar road home stretched out before us—a winding country road we’d traveled a thousand times.

We hadn’t noticed the deer until it appeared, frozen in our headlights. “Sarah!” I cried out, my hand instinctively reaching for her.

She jerked the worn leather steering wheel of our 2007 gray Lexus right, her face brimming with shock and immediate despair, toward the shoulder, sending our car careening in that direction. Time hung in the air as the wheels skimmed the loose gravel beneath, spinning us 180 degrees before coming to rest inches from a roadside ditch and a behemoth of an oak tree.

We sat in stunned silence, our own ragged breathing the only sound in the otherwise quiet car. The brown pronghorn deer looked at us with a sense of obliouvousness, almost as if to say “why would you do that,” and then peacefully trolloped away without a mark, bounding off into the trees, darkening by the second.

“We were lucky,” Sarah panted, her knuckles white as she clenched onto the steering wheel. Though we avoided a fatal collision by a hair that day, the encounter served to put in perspective how quickly situations on the road can change, how one careless moment or one inattentive reaction could have had a fatal result. Though we survived unscathed, traumatized, thousands of American families aren’t as fortunate.

The statistics are grim: 34,000 annual fatalities from driving in America alone, which surpasses the combined total of American military fatalities in Iraq and Afghanistan. Two years’ worth of fatalities from driving equals the American casualties for the entirety of the Vietnam War. These aren’t numbers—they’re parents, children, friends, and neighbors who died too young, too often, due to preventable circumstances.

This reality renders the whole learning process of driving so critically necessary. When Sarah jerked the steering wheel, she was doing it on instinct and not training. A more trained driver would have known that gradual braking down the road while staying on track is generally much safer than a quick turn that can lead to rollovers or colliding with head-on traffic. Driving lessons override our natural reflexes, transforming our distressed reactions into calm actions.

Effective driver education does more than teach the mechanics of driving—it instills responsibility. It educates drivers to use physics in real-world scenarios: stopping at various speeds, the effect of weather on vehicle performance, and the devastating effects of even “low-speed” crashes. When drivers learn these concepts, they drive more wisely, maintaining appropriate following distances and adjusting their driving to conditions, not merely obeying speed limits.

Since our near-death encounter, Sarah and I have both taken advanced defensive driving courses. I’ve come to realize that reducing the number of deaths on the road requires a multi-faceted approach. Infrastructure upgrades like rumble strips, better highway dividers, and road design that naturally enforces proper speeds can make a huge difference-maker. Advances in automobile technology—from automatic emergency braking to lane departure warnings—serve as necessary safety nets when human attention fails.

But technology alone won’t cure the issue. Cultural changes need to happen, too. We must de-stigmatize “overcaution” on the highway and reward safe choices like designating sober drivers or getting off the road when fatigued. Normalizing distracted driving—driving while texting, fiddling with in-dash entertainment controls, or multitasking—has to be countered with education and real repercussions.

My grandfather frequently tells me how, in his time, seatbelts were optional add-ons that people largely disregarded. Nowadays, we’d never dream of driving without one. Such cultural changes won’t occur overnight, but they’re possible through repeated education and reinforcement.

I’ve seen the results of reckless driving within my own family. My cousin Thomas thought he was invincible when he drove, frequently texting while driving, much to the dismay of family members. His run of good fortune came to an end when he rear-ended a vehicle at a red light—luckily at slow speed. No one was injured seriously, but the incident served as a wake-up call. The sound of guilt in his voice when he phoned his parents during the family dinner and the panic that he instilled in our family that day still lingers in my mind as a reminder that our actions affect not only ourselves but also others around us.

Ever since our close encounter with death, I’ve become an advocate for safe driving to my friends. I’ve come up with a small promise that my friends and I have made: no phone usage when driving, no exceptions, and speaking up when we, as passengers, feel like the driver is driving recklessly, even if it brings about social discomfort. These small promises create ripples of change in motion that cascade beyond our social group.

I’ve also taken it as my duty to my younger siblings. My brother has just obtained his learner’s permit, and I find time to practice with him on a regular basis, focusing on habits that extend beyond being answered on the driver test—scanning for possible hazards, being aware of all vehicles on the road around us, and honoring the huge responsibility that comes with being behind the wheel.

And as I think back on that night with Sarah, I’m reminded how one stroke of good fortune kept us from being statistics. But since then I’ve discovered that road safety is not a matter of luck but of preparation, learning, and choices. Every time I drive, I’m reminded of that knowledge and the fact that every time I step into a car to drive from one place to another, I am not only in control of my life, but I’m also in control of the lives of everyone I share the road with.

The golden glow of the Texas sun setting below the horizon remains with me still, not as a recollection of fear, but as the beginning of my journey to become a wiser, more responsible driver—one who knows true freedom behind the wheel is not in abandoning restraint but in embracing the responsibility to protect lives through informed, vigilant driving.