Fighting a Flurry of Fleeting Wings

A casket sat open, surrounded by a chaotic assortment of stickers, Post-it notes, pens, and markers. Old photos of beaming friends, a beaming family, and a beaming boy lined the walls, highlighting the loss of life suffered. My mom and I scrawled out our condolences on one of the Post-its before we scurried across the crowd to our friend, Tanya, dressed in a beautiful yellow dress. She was trying to remain positive in accordance with the deceased’s wishes, but you could still see red pain in her eyes and sullen lines of tension around her mouth. Could you blame her for her inevitable suffering? We wished her the best, and off we went, in a vehicle similar to the one that the departed traveled in immediately prior to death.

It all started half a week prior, when my mom read, or more so, saw, a Facebook post. A boy with angel wings seared his eyes into her soul, courtesy of our friend. As a middle-aged woman, Tanya may have simply found religion and desired to present her beliefs to the world. Perhaps, our friend simply enjoyed ethereal art or maybe her boy really wanted to see himself with wings. Unfortunately, none of these situations reflected the harsh reality that our friend had just lost her oldest son, a seven-year-old boy named Scott, to a distracted driver.

My mom immediately reached out to the mourning woman, as she was closer with Tanya than me. We learned that she was driving that day. Her three children had to go to various afterschool activities, as per usual, and there was traffic, also as per usual. While going through the motions of life, simply remaining caught in the perpetual cycle of waiting for a green light, her life changed forever with the introduction of another driver into her backseat. To this day, no one knows why this man failed to stop for the red light. Tanya’s car was not the first to stop, and the light had been red for some time. Still, he became responsible for the forging and flurry of the angel wings of a seven-year-old and the critical injury of two other younger children. He caused the emptying of a soul still alive, an emptying that would prompt me to promote a future where elementary school aged children do not die from the ignorance of the driver populace. As such, we must secure a future where all drivers receive proper driver education and develop an understanding of maximizing safety on the road.

Perhaps, the man responsible for killing Scott has a kid at home of his own. Imagine if this man were fully in charge of developing his child’s driving skills; imagine if he passed on his dangerous habits. He could support a generational curse that threatens the future of not only today’s generation but tomorrow’s generation as well. Even drivers who have yet to kill anyone pose a threat as the primary driving teachers of their children. Does a fifty- or sixty-year-old parent understand current road laws? This is unlikely with the lack of retesting for license renewal under our current system. For instance, if you ask my mother where to put your hands on a steering wheel, she will say ten and two; we both know this to be false under new guidelines. The old generation remains loyal to old, outdated rules. We cannot deem the education of past decades sufficient for developing our children today. As such, we must support modern driver education for our children to ensure that they become better than ourselves, preventing the senseless manslaughter of those like Scott.

Lamentably, simple steps could have prevented this tragedy. Practicing driving with someone else in the car as much as possible prior to getting a license aids the mitigation of accidents from sheer inability to effectively control a car, while avoiding the active use of distractions such as drugs, alcohol, phones, and dashboard touch screens while driving reduces the likelihood of accidents from pure negligence, like the one that extinguished the life of Scott. Of course, one would be reasonable to doubt such baseless assertions made by a Word Document typist. To quench your fears, consider this statistic from the CDC. “The fatal crash rate at night among teen drivers…is about three times as high as that of adult drivers…per mile driven” (2024). A government agency connects inexperience behind the wheel to motor deaths, so if you followed COVID protocols, you should consider getting yourself or your child extra practice if you or they are a new driver. The NHTSA addresses the subsequent assertion, estimating “621…road users…[were] killed in distraction-affected traffic crashes [in 2022]” (2024). Would you kill everyone in a theater? If not, then you should prioritize attentive driving. Notably, driving a vehicle with high safety ratings from “federal statistics and consumer report literature” may prevent road-related deaths by heightening the likelihood of surviving in the event of an accident. Small cars, trucks, and utility vehicles may pose a risk to driver and passenger health, suggesting drivers’ avoidance of using such automobiles (Top Ten Tips to Avoid an Accident | Geico, 2019).

A few experiences with accidents stand out to me in my life. Please join me on this journey down memory lane, a road with so many wrecks that the police lights make the midnight sky a Fourth of July fantasy, and cars wait to pass in a line so long that it reaches past the Milky Way’s halo.

Long before my friend lost her child in a car crash, I experienced my first crash as a ten-year-old, sitting quietly in the backseat. On a random Saturday afternoon, someone slammed on their brakes to turn left into a neighborhood and apartment complex conglomerate, likely the location of their home. This was not uncommon in our community; it happened near daily due to the shrouding of the roads with trees and the community’s overshadowing by the neighboring city’s massive water system office building. My mom braced for impact as she slammed the brake. We nearly got lucky, stopping just in time not to hit the preceding car. My mom and my grandmother looked at each other, smiling with relief; then, my mom smiled at me in the backseat, thrilled that we were all still safe and alive. An instant later, a crunchy thud signaled our impending misfortune as our car was driven into the car in front of us, resulting in a four-car collision. My mother and grandmother suffered whiplash, my grandmother’s pain heightened by her age. Something stabbed my eye, and I was momentarily unable to see clearly. Naturally, the catalyst following our car immediately fled the scene, and no one got their license plate number. This introduction to the danger of driving taught me about the importance of an understanding of the law, quick reflexes, and visible roads with turn lanes to combat injury and death on the road.

Years later, I had my own accident experience. Driving home from a long day, I was nearly home. As a teen, my discomfort peaked while driving in heavy traffic, but I managed this fear most days. Heading over the bridge before the turnoff for my street, the driver in front of me slammed on his brakes, hard. To this day, I do not know what caused this, as there were no major obstructions in the road, no drivers ahead slamming their brakes. In a panic, I attempted to prevent my subsequent collision with the car ahead of me, but my Prius’ brakes failed. My efforts were not fully lost, as I left no visible damage on the other car, but that day still showed me the imminent danger present in every moment on the road. I even nearly got involved in a Venmo scam because of the accident, highlighting the road’s effect on all aspects of life.

Although I have been lucky, and these experiences represent my only accidents, I have also involved myself in a dangerous situation with another driver that I greatly regret allowing to ever happen. I remain determined to ensure that I can never again speak about my involvement in such situations in the present tense. At fifteen years old, I traveled with an adult family friend to another state. In that trip alone, I witnessed this friend drive while severely sleep deprived and nearly falling asleep at the wheel, drive while texting her husband, and drive while fiddling with Google Maps in her lap. Each burrrrrr as we nearly went off the road reminded me of the danger that everyone on the road was in as we traveled. As a permit carrier, I offered to drive multiple times, but the friend consistently declined. Since I was still a minor, I felt that it would be rude to push the issue, and I kept reminding myself of how she did not have to agree to take me with her out of state, resulting in my silence. By insisting that I drive or that she fully engaged in driving, I could have mitigated an immense amount of peril for drivers, passengers, and pedestrians in the area. Consequently, I pledge to never allow such a situation to occur or to continue occurring ever again.

My experiences in conjunction with national statistics suggest the adoption of a safer approach to driving that supports modern driver education by more than simply parental figures combined with road diligence both in and out of the driver’s seat. Such institutes may prevent the untimely death of many of our populace. Remember my friend’s son. Remember my friend. And, most importantly, remember that this situation could have happened to anyone, including you. Defend today to prevent the destruction and degradation of tomorrow by consuming, pursuing, and spreading driver safety and education.