A Moment Gained is a Life Lost

“Is that his brain?” One kid in my driver’s ed class says as we watch a video of the aftermath of a fatal car accident.

“Yes,” our instructor tells us as we all gasp in shock. I try my hardest to look away as the camera pans to the body of a man on the ground. Another man in the video struggles to clean up what was left of the victim’s brain tissue. I quickly attempt to focus on the corner of the chair in front of me but fail while the video continues to show the gory results of reckless driving. I silently reassure myself that this is just a video; it’s not happening in real life – except it is. This was a real man who was alive merely 20 minutes before, and reality hits me like a truck. My heart is pounding, my palms are sweaty, and I realize that I do not want to be on the road anytime soon.

This was four years ago, and I still vividly remember the details of the driver awareness videos that our instructor showed us. Although the haunting images have been implanted in my brain since then, they’ve also allowed me to realize the importance in driving education. I’ve always been a careful driver since then – I take care to know the rules of the road and follow them. My experience in driver’s ed prepared me to not only keep myself safe on the road, but to keep others safe as well. A reckless driver is more of a danger to society than to himself. That is why I believe driving education can drastically decrease the amount of fatal accidents on the road.

One way we, as a society, can accomplish this task is through more honest discussion about the dangers of driving. What I experienced in my driver’s ed class, although shocking, is an experience I think a lot of people can learn from. Showing teens and adults truthful videos and commentaries about the life-threatening risks that occur when people lose control is one way of educating young drivers about reckless driving. However, some might suggest that this method of teaching drivers about the realities of unsafe driving is too cruel, that young minds aren’t ready deal with such a heavy and gory topic. Although I do sympathize with this view, I think it is very necessary to note that the leading cause of death amongst teenagers is motor-vehicle accidents, accounting for nearly one-half of all teenage deaths. Maybe it is too cruel to show young adults the gruesome realities of dangerous driving, but I think it is more cruel to allow them to get on the road without being aware of its dangers.

On three occasions I have witnessed reckless driving amongst my family and friends. My dad used to work for Uber, and about seven years ago he was driving a passenger to a specific location. As he was waiting at a stop light, a drunk driver rear-ended him, and my dad ended up hitting another car and spinning into a ditch. Four people, including my dad, had to go to the hospital to be treated with major injuries. My dad’s passenger broke his ribs, and my dad injured his back, which still affects him to this day. Although my dad wasn’t the one driving irresponsibly, I certainly saw the effects of another driver’s reckless decision to drink and drive. On a separate occasion, in my senior year of high school, one of my friends was late to school one day. When we messaged her to make sure she was okay, she told us that she had gotten into a car accident. Before we made any assumptions about what happened, she proceeded to tell us the story: while she was driving, she dropped her water bottle, and, going 40 MPH, she attempted to bend down and pick up the bottle, not knowing that there was a stopped car merely 20 feet away from her, and she then slammed in the back of his car, totaling it. She acknowledged that she wasn’t paying to what was in front of her and didn’t notice that there was a car ahead of her.

This last story that I am about to tell happened very recently. This accident happened in October, only three months into my first year in college. I woke up on a Tuesday morning to a schoolwide email sent out a few minutes before saying that there was a fatal accident on the road near our university, and it involved four students from our school. I panicked as I read the email, and as the day went on, I quickly found out the identities of the victims. Four senior girls were on their way to a gathering at a local restaurant when a man going 120 MPH on a 55 MPH street ran into them and killed them instantly.

Not even a week later, my school held a memorial for the four girls in which I got sing in my university choir to honor their memories.

In my eighteen years of living, I have never experienced and seen the level of grief this event caused. Although I had never met any of these girls, I still felt greatly bereaved by the lives lost in this tragedy. I got to see firsthand the grief and the sadness that their parents, their siblings, and their friends went through during that troubling time. It made me realize that reckless driving not only effects those directly involved, but it also effects loved ones, people who will never see and talk to that person again, no matter how much they want to.

The steps that I can take to be a better and safer driver is to stay focused on the road, I don’t need to be distracted by my phone or other things happening around me. I can raise awareness for those who have been deeply affected by reckless driving and not only help them, but also help educate people who need it. It is of vital importance to myself and others to be responsible when driving because it might just save a life – and show respect to those who’ve lost it.