The Ever-Present Danger of Driving

My job is to park cars at a service shop near my home. Less than 50 yards from the service bay, I can always hear cars speeding back and forth. There’ll often be flashing red and blue lights outside because yet another driver going very fast to nowhere in particular is pulled over and given a ticket. As for the shop, I greet people when they enter the service bay. Often they’re distraught, because for one reason or another, their vehicle stopped working.

I’ve seen all kinds of things, from a sedan with an axle, wheel, and braking system snapped completely off the car, to a cargo van with coolant flooding the engine and burning inside it, making the entire service bay reek like rotting caramel. One of my coworkers bought a low-end sports car. Two weeks after he purchased it, he totaled it by crashing at over 110 miles per hour on the highway that runs right past my place of work. Miraculously, he was unharmed.

Many of my family members and the friends I’ve made throughout my life have been in some sort of car accident. The terrifying factor about car accidents isn’t how life-altering the event can be, it’s how oddly frequent and glossed over they are. When I drive down the highway to school, traffic will often be slowed because of an accident. Minor scratches are the most typical ones, though I do remember the day when I was driving to see my girlfriend and a car on the side of the road was more flame and smoke than anything else.

My parents took great care to teach me how to drive safely. They taught me how to drive in snow and ice in the middle of the night. They instructed me on driving defensively on busy highways or lazy country roads and had me take a course on how to drive defensively as well. More than anything else with driving, I’m thankful that they taught me to stay attentive and respect the law of the road.

Driver education is crucial for that specific reason: if people aren’t taught how to drive safely, they’ll be a life-threatening risk to themselves and everyone around them. According to GSU’s HyperPhysics Project, if an average person gets in a car crash at 30 miles an hour and isn’t wearing a seatbelt, they’ll experience around 150 g’s, or 12 tons of force. The human body isn’t meant to withstand that. Driver education teaches drivers how to pay attention to the road around them. That attention alone reduces the chances of an accident drastically, which lowers the chances of someone getting hurt as they’re driving to go pick up their groceries.

The most important step to reduce the number of deaths caused by car accidents is to constantly scan the road. Driving isn’t meant to be a restful and slumber-filled activity. When it is, people die. In my defensive driving course, I learned to scan between my side and center mirrors every 10 seconds so that I was always aware of the vehicles around me. To this day, my commutes to college and work have been safe.

I’ve seen many people drive unsafely before, whether they be people I care about or work with. I’ve nearly been in many car accidents. I was driving home from the store a few weeks ago and gave the driver behind me lots of time to slow down since I had to stop before I could turn into my driveway. As I came to a halt right in front of my home, I heard the screech of rubber on the slick pavement. The driver barely managed to stop before they rear-ended my CR-V and were likely inches away from my rear bumper. It was dusk and their lights weren’t on. My almost-accident wasn’t because of malice or idiocy, it was because of a lack of attention about what was happening on the road.

I can be a safer driver by paying better attention to the road around me. I may drive for my paycheck, but my driving isn’t perfect. Sometimes I make rash choices on the road or drive when I’m too tired. I can help others to be safer on the road both by being safe myself and by example. I have two younger sisters and I know that they notice how much care I take when I drive. They notice when I take a curve a bit too quick or get engrossed enough in a conversation that I almost run through a stop sign into crossing traffic. They notice when I respect the speed limit and how I react to getting cut off or nearly getting hit by a speeding driver. Driving to keep myself safe is reason enough to focus on being the best driver I can be, but driving to protect my family, friends, and the people on the road with me might be even more important than that.