A Need for Speed

I feel carpet below my feet and the whole room smells like Play-Doh. My eyes dart from car to car akin to the motion of a ping pong match as I watch my Hot wheels run around the track. I hear the hum of the car-boosters powered by large batteries. However, the circular track that each of the 2 cars ran on had a twist, each track intersected at a single point, a hazard that would cause one car to “lose” and fall off the track while the other goes on and wins 1^st place. I had placed personal bets on my green car and decided my stubby orange car would lose. The cars accelerated at different rates, but I saw their connection aligning. I waited. A couple more seconds…and…SLAM. Contact was made! However, it did not satisfy my masculine-childhood urges of destruction and power. Apprehension slowly turned into fear as I saw the orange car fly by my head at a dangerous speed. The green car won. I had won. Why did I still feel like I lost?

Soon, I felt my shoes sticking to the ground with every step on a rubbery platform. Around me were bikes where drivers that seemed below the age of 12 to violently jerk their vehicle left and right to make turns on their arcade game screens. I wince as the kids repeatedly fall off the map and are last in the race. I happen to be at a different machine, holding the clutch with my right hand while a steering wheel is held with my left. I click the “start” button after inserting tokens and the racers on the OLED screen all rev their engines. I floor the gas pedal on the machine and attempt to shift the clutch to look cool. Hey! I am winning, I think as I speed past other supercars. I soon catch up to 1^st place and see a secret side-road requiring a sharp turn and drift in exchange for a faster route. It was high-risk, high-reward situation. I took it. As soon as I turned the wheel I realized that I realized I jerked it too quickly and crashed very hard into the side-barriers. The realistic technology jerked me back and forth and I felt my heart twinge. I got up and did not want to play anymore. The screen faded black…

Suddenly, I felt a brake pedal below my feet and broke out of my early-morning grogginess, coming into consciousness. I was on my way to high school keeping both hands on the wheel this time, my eyes straining red from concentration on the road and my side-view and back mirrors. It was 6:44 AM and I was going to be late for school. I could not risk being tardy, I would risk getting detention and then having a demerit on my high school record! It seemed like I would lose at every situation if I did not speed. Easy call, right? Wrong. Driving may be the single most dangerous activity of all time that remains a lethal threat daily.

Stunts such as jumping out of a plane may seem daunting and little can even muster up the confidence to volunteer. While only about 19 people die every year skydiving, CDC says that almost 3,700 people die daily in car accidents. I believe driving is the most dangerous activity that mankind could ever partake in and we still partake in. While extreme stunts such as solo free climbing may seem significantly dangerous, the hidden danger of what we do every day has higher risks to our globe. People drive to school, work, or pretty much anywhere to travel, and something far more dangerous than public stunts is normalized. When one puts their foot on the accelerator, they become responsible for not only their own lives but virtually anyone who could be in the path of the car or around the car.

Besides getting in the car and choosing to drive, speeding is whole other realm of danger. Driving just 5-10 mph above the speed limit can mean the difference between a minor side-swipe crash and not reacting in time, having potentially catastrophic life-threatening consequences. Moreover, pressing on one’s accelerator indefinitely increases the likelihood of injurie, as one’s body must act as a shock-absorber. The faster either car in the collision is, the more the force, directly increasing the intensity of injury.

Every time I grab my keys, I remember my aunt who named my mother. It was a simple commute on the highway, she was speeding a little fast. She was only 30 at the time, the car went out of control. Every summer, the 3 survivors of the backseat who survived remind me of the responsibility of grabbing the wheel and putting one’s seat belt every time I travel to Pakistan. There is no restart button.

You can’t just put your car back on the Hotwheels track.

Let go of that accelerator.

It is okay to “lose” sometimes.