You can’t… until you know

You can’t… until you know

By Jodi Price

You never forget the moment when you think your life is about to end… and you never forget the feeling of relief when it doesn’t.

Throughout high school and for the entirety of my life I’ve been an over-achiever. Between school, work, extracurriculars, and home life, I have always kept myself busy. This is something that I’m proud of, but it usually leaves me with no time for relaxation. When I first got my license, my car became my safe place to escape my stresses and driving myself to and from my activities became my relaxation time. This newfound safe space was wonderful for my mental health, but as time went on, I started to develop a dangerous familiarity and casualness while driving. I began to eat and drink my meals in the car, text my parents and look up directions while I was driving, blast music and take phone calls, clean my dashboard… any distraction you could think of, I was doing it. But one day, about 8 months after getting my license, everything changed.

In August of 2019 I was in a car crash with my best friend who was driving distracted. Her driving had always made me nervous because she would frequently text while behind the wheel. But one day when we were driving together a distraction that I had never previously thought dangerous caused us to crash on an 8-lane highway in downtown Provo Utah. At around 8:30 p.m. my best friend got a call from her sister, and when she looked at her phone to answer the call, the cars in front of us suddenly stopped. I looked up and screamed, but it was too late. My friend slammed on the brakes; but it did nothing to stop us from slamming into the car ahead of us, going 50 miles per hour. 

My friend and I were lucky that day. We walked away from that crash with no injuries. The person we had hit in the other car was also unharmed, but the vehicles were both totaled. If we hadn’t been wearing our seatbelts, we would have been killed.

When I walked away from that crash, I knew 2 things: one, that I was extremely blessed, or lucky, or both; and 2, that the crash had given me a second chance, and a warning. When I got home that night, I stayed up and talked with my parents about the crash. We talked about what went wrong, how I felt, and most importantly, how I was going to let this experience change me. Together we created rules and set goals to eliminate all my driving distractions. We wrote it all down in a driving contract which I signed and stashed in the glove box of my car.

To say that I have honored that contract perfectly would be a lie. I have had many slip-ups and struggles along the way. There are a few distractions that I do not struggle with anymore. Eating and driving is one of them, as well as cleaning or getting ready while driving. But some of the smaller things like changing music stations and talking to my friends on the phone have not been as easy to avoid. Fortunately for me, discovering this scholarship was the nudge I needed to get back on track.

While evaluating my biggest distractions and trying to find a solution, I have had some difficult realizations. Since the crash and signing that contract, I have been relying on my own sheer willpower to simply ignore the distractions, rather than taking advantage of all the wonderful tools around me that could really help me make a change. I thought that downloading a distracted driving app or reaching out to people for help would somehow make me weaker and for the last two years I have been so down on myself for still being tempted to look at my phone. I have been expecting myself to resist the distractions, without removing them. But I always tell people that there is nothing wrong with getting help. So, although taking my own advice is hard, my pride is not worth risking my life, or the lives of others.

With these realizations in mind, I decided that the hardest distractions I was dealing with didn’t need to be ignored, but rather removed entirely. To start, I downloaded an app called DriveMode that prevents me from unlocking my phone while my car is moving. Now, even when I do feel tempted, I know that I can stay safe, and that I don’t need to feel guilty. Dealing with my other distractions, however, is much more difficult. Unlike my phone which can simply be turned off, the people I drive with have no off switch, making them the most unpredictable distractions that I face. In order to remedy this, I decided to have some conversations with the people that I drive around the most.

In the last few days, I have had some very raw and at times very uncomfortable conversations with my friends and family. But after each conversation, the feeling of relief has outweighed all the awkwardness and I have been able to connect with my friends and family in a way that is new and by all accounts completely wonderful. While talking with my friends, they were able to understand my trauma and appreciate my goals. But when talking with my siblings who are relatively young and couldn’t fully grasp my trauma, I took a different approach. Together we decided to choose a safe word, something that I could say so that they would know that they needed to settle down.

These changes, while difficult, are already making me a better, safer driver. And although it has been hard to seek help, I know that the feelings of struggling have not even come close to the feeling I experienced in that crashing car, which makes every single moment of difficult change entirely worth it.

I am not the only teen to struggle with making changes like these. The problem with distracted driving is not that we aren’t aware of the danger, but that we cannot fully grasp this danger until we experience it for ourselves. Until we have an up close and personal experience with the dangers of distracted driving, we cannot possibly understand. I know that I didn’t. You really can’t change, until you know.