Name: Jimmie Berry
From: Abilene, Texas
Votes: 0
About a month ago,
I found myself standing on the side of the road, scattered debris
littering the pavement, sirens wailing in my ears as the stench of
burning rubber mixed with that of rain. I’ll never forget that
moment, the swerve that seemed to happen instantaneously as I lost
control of a 2 ton hunk of steel and stale plastic and fishtailed
into oncoming traffic. I’ll never forget the terror I felt, the
absolute loss of control that’s come to haunt every waking dream
and creeps back into my mind each time I sit back down in the
driver’s seat. It’s an experience I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy
and one that I would forget in an instant if I could. It’s an
experience that millions of people experience worldwide, oftentimes
with substantially more fatal consequences.What could I have done
differently? It’s a question I often ask myself, though I never
seem to come up with a satisfying answer. I could have gotten better
tires, I could have gone slower, I could have avoided driving in the
rain, yet I didn’t and there I found myself, desolate and
stuttering on the side of the road as I failed to fully understand
how close I had found myself to becoming another statistic displayed
on billboards and graphs.
No
one is perfect, no car drives perfectly, no road is perfect, because
of this, accidents are an inevitability. America’s Drivers Ed
programs focus primarily on preventing wrecks, a well-meaning but
flawed sentiment that fails to adequately prepare a driver for the
road. You can be the best, most well prepared driver alive and still
fall victim to a particularly wet patch of road or a careless peer.
Drivers should be trained to prevent as well as deal with and recover
from potential accidents or upsets on the road. In training potential
drivers to recover from situations that would have otherwise resulted
in a crash, I feel that we would avoid many of the wrecks that plague
our highways. Had I been adequately equipped to recover from a
hydroplane then I wouldn’t be writing this essay now. If one wants
to become safer on the road, I believe one should learn to avoid and
prevent wrecks as well as recover from potentially fatal situations.
Growing
up, my father drank a lot. Drinking and driving was a daily
occurrence for him, and still is. I recall white-knuckled grips on
the door handles as we hurdled down rural highways, praying to
whomever would listen that I would live to see the end of the ride.
No matter how much I pleaded, the beer bottle was a permanent fixture
in whatever vehicle he happened to be driving. A wreck is an
inevitability for him, regardless of how well trained in crash
prevention the other driver is, yet if the other driver is trained in
both prevention and recovery, then perhaps the graphs and charts
would lose out on another statistic.
