In Someone Else’s Hands

“So…What do you want to do for your birthday this year?” My mom says, hands on the wheel, eyes looking pointedly at me. “You know it’s coming up right?”
“I know when my birthday is.” I shoot back. “I don’t know. I think I’ll just have Gabi over for a sleepover and we can swim like we always do.”

“Don’t you want to do something different? It’s your 17th!”

I look back down at my phone and continue building my house on the Sims 4. What do I want to do for my birthday? Should I invite other people? No, probably not.

“I’m feeling really dizzy all of the sudden,” My mom says, blinking hard and slowly.

Are you okay? I try to blurt out but before I can she shouts.

“My chest!” Her right hand releases from the wheel and she clutches at her heart. I look upward and through the windshield, I see a semi-truck just a foot or two in front of us. My mom yelps and grabs back control of the wheel, swerving to the left in an attempt to avoid a collision. The back left corner of the truck is clipped by the front right side of the car, tearing off the right side view mirror and scraping the car as we barrel past.

I remember thinking Oh my God. We actually hit it.

We’ve had a lot of close calls in the past but we actually hit the semi.

Before I can complete another thought, my attention is taken back to the car. We aren’t stopping. We aren’t slowing down. I glance over to see my mom, unconscious, as we fly toward the concrete median separating the bidirectional highway. We collide with the barrier, smashing the front left corner of the car, and continue hurdling across the highway. The car, instead of slowing down from the impact, takes off in the opposite direction, ping-ponging to the other side of the highway straight toward the guardrail. We hit the guardrail and screech along it before the force of the car breaks through it entirely. Finally, we tumble down the side of a ditch before the car comes to an abrupt halt.

Your iPhone has detected a crash. Dialing emergency services in 3…2…1

Where’s my phone? Where’s my phone? I need to call for help. I need to do something.

“Where’s my phone?” I shout, and my brother anxiously replies.

“I don’t know.”
“Give me your phone. Where’s my phone” I scramble, unbuckling quickly and searching around my passenger seat. Dirt is everywhere. Is it from the ditch or the plant I had in a little pot I painted on our vacation?

“I don’t know!” He yells back at me. He’s not a yeller. He’s not an anxious kid either.

Through my rapid searching, I turn and see my mom, her head limply hanging down toward me.

“Mommy!” I shake her in a violent attempt to wake her up. “Mommy!!” I haven’t called her anything but Mom in forever.

My brother screams Mommy in the background but I don’t pay any attention, I just keep shaking. And she opens her eyes. Finally.

I flip around to face my brother and scan him for any obvious injuries. He’s too distracted with our mom but I need to talk to him. I’m choking on something in the air and I slowly realize that the car is filling up with smoke and there’s airbag powder in my lungs.

“Isaiah,” I shout through the pain in my throat and above the sound of our mom mumbling about what’s happening. “Are you okay?” He is. Thankfully. “I need you to listen to me. I’m going to go get help. I need you to get out of the car and then get Mommy out of the car.” He unbuckles and assures me he is only in minor pain. I climb out of the car, surprised that my door opened at all with the sheer amount of damage it took. Once I see him out and can clearly tell that he is unharmed (at least visibly), I run up to the highway, waving my arms wide and high, shouting for help. My gaze is taken by an older man walking toward me along the side of the highway, behind him is the clipped semi and another truck, which I assume must be his. He’s on the phone but with who, I don’t know.

“Can you call 911? Did you call 911? We need help.” I realize I am repeating myself but I can feel my heartbeat in my head and my shoulder is aching so bad.

“Are you alright? Is anyone hurt? Ma’am. Are you okay? I’m on the phone with 911.” He asks me but I’m too stunned and I don’t answer right away.

“Uh..yeah. We’re not seriously hurt. Can you call 911? We need help.”

He tries to ask me more questions but I run back down the hill to help my brother and he follows. My mom is out of the car, sitting on the grass on her knees asking what happened. She hit her head so hard she broke the drivers’ side window. But she was unconscious before we even collided.

“What happened?” She asks, tearing up and reasonably confused. “Where are we?”
“We’re in Colorado,” I tell her. But that only brings up more questions about why we weren’t at home and why we crashed and why we were out of state and why there is a man that she doesn’t recognize asking her questions. I tell her we were on vacation. A spontaneous weekend trip to Colorado to go hiking. We visited shops in Old Colorado and went to Garden of the Gods. We ate at new restaraunts and made jokes about the mess we made in our hotel room on accident.

“What happened? Where are we? How did we crash?” She is crying now but I can’t offer her any comfort because she won’t remember what I tell her. I continue the search for our phones, pulling hers and mine out from under the gas pedal of the car. How did they get there? I don’t know. There’s not a lot I know at this point.

Thankfully, everyone was alright. Ambulances arrived. My mom was flown by helicopter to the nearest hospital to get her head injury evaluated. My grandma drove the seven hours west to meet us as soon as she heard the news. My brother and I were dosed with pain meds, x-rayed, and checked out as well. The doctors determined that my mom had a syncopal episode, essentially, she passed out while we were driving but why, they still don’t know yet. We made it home the next day once my grandma had arrived to drive us. It was a crazy experience and part of me still doesn’t believe it really happened. But it did. We were lucky, but we might not have been. The crash we were in could have very likely killed us all. The junkyard operator that we ended up picking the car up from determined that once we hit the semi, the steering column was trashed and we wouldn’t have been able to control the car even if my mom had been conscious. Every time I step into a vehicle, whether with my mom, another family member, my friends, or even when I’m behind the wheel, I think about the crash. I think about how easy it is to do so much damage in so little time. I think about what would have happened if there were more cars on the highway that day. If we had hit a car with people in it instead of a massive sturdy truck. If we would have died. Because we could have died.

Driver education is crucial in reducing driving-related deaths. While my family’s crash wasn’t the result of a lack of education or preventable driving behaviors, there are a lot of driving deaths every year that are the result of a lack of education. I took a defensive driving course as a part of my driver education and that is something that I think should be required before licenses are issued. Defensive driving courses teach young drivers how to respond in critical situations like mine. How to maintain a safe following distance, how to avoid road rage, how to be adaptable in time-sensitive environments. These things can all prevent collisions. If we were driving just a few feet farther from the semi, maybe we wouldn’t have crashed in the first place. I can’t change the past but we all have a responsibility to change the future.

To become a safer driver myself, I take a couple of important steps that were taught to me in my defensive driving course. Before starting the car, I make sure myself and my passengers are buckled and in their seats properly. What would have happened if I wasn’t buckled? I could have very well been ejected from the car through the windshield and been much more seriously injured than I was. I make sure I always drive the speed limit or slightly below. I can’t control other drivers, but I can control myself and my actions on the road. I don’t hold conversations, text, or permit any distractions while I’m driving. I also don’t distract anyone else who is driving when I’m in the car. My full attention is on the road. If a car ahead of me is driving irresponsibly, with my defensive driving knowledge, I am able to think quickly and rationally to ensure my safety and the safety of my passengers. That is why I believe that defensive driving courses should be required to make us all better drivers and make our roads and highways safer.