Near Misses to Tragedies: A Reflection on Personal and Peer Driving Incidents

Since I got my license, I have been fortunate enough to not have been in any major car accidents. There have been two or three instances in which I scraped up someone’s car backing out of a parking spot, and one more significant instance in which I bumped into a semi-truck. I’ve heard stories from my friends about accidents they have been in or witnessed, most of them worse than the few I’ve been in. Since I don’t have a groundbreaking solution that will drastically reduce the number of car accidents, I would instead like to use this essay to share the stories of some accidents my friends and I have been in and reflect on what lessons can be learned from them.

I’ll start with my previously mentioned semi-truck incident. The night prior to the incident I worked a 10-hour shift, got home at around 1:00 am, and woke up around 6:00 am for college. I had been tired all day and was still tired when I left school to head home. During that drive home, I started slipping in and out of consciousness. I would start to fall asleep without even noticing and then I would wake up a few seconds after. I tried turning the AC to max and blasting music, but neither kept me awake. I kept telling myself that I wouldn’t fall asleep again, or that nothing bad would happen. I was wrong. I woke up on the freeway in time to see my passenger-side mirror go flying off my car as I brushed up against a semi-truck. That got my adrenaline going and I was awake for the rest of the drive. I haven’t fallen asleep while driving since that incident. There are a few lessons to be taken away here; the main one being that although it is good advice not to sleep and drive, it is best to just not drive while tired. No one ever gets behind the wheel and plans on falling asleep, plus, as I said, I didn’t even notice I was falling asleep. Another lesson is that any “tricks” for staying awake while driving don’t work. Looking back on the incident, I notice In many ways, I was lucky.

A friend of mine and his brother also got lucky back in December of 2022. My friend and his 14-year-old brother, Dave, were driving home from school. They were on the highway behind a pickup truck, who was behind a semi. The driver of a second semi-truck on the other side of the road fell asleep, crossed the median, and collided with the first semi. The pickup truck crashed into the wreckage and its driver (who wasn’t wearing a seatbelt) was thrown through the windshield. The pickup driver and one of the semi-truck drivers died, with the other driver badly injured. My friend was able to stop and pull over to safety, and both him and his brother were physically okay. Following this, Dave was hesitant about starting driver’s education, but eventually he did, and he got his license. I have heard from my friend that Dave is an exceptionally safe driver. There are some obvious lessons from this story – don’t drive while tired, maintain a safe following distance, and wear a seatbelt – but I find the magnitude of the accident and Dave’s behavior in response to the accident more noteworthy. The incident serves as a reminder of the damage a car crash can cause.

Two months ago, I was reminded that not everyone is as lucky as I was, or even as lucky as Dave was, and a fair number of car crashes are fatal. There was a kid I went to Highschool with who was just a grade behind me. The night before his graduation ceremony, he was out on his motorcycle being a bit reckless, going somewhere in the neighborhood of 100 mph. Suddenly, a pickup truck swerved in front of him, he hit the back of the pickup, and died. Reportedly, the police did not find him in one piece. The images that come to mind are unsettling, and what happened to this kid is a tragedy. This story best highlights the most important lesson about driving, a lesson that has played a part in all of these stories: none of us are invincible.

People, especially younger people (who make up the majority of new drivers), don’t always have a realistic understanding of just how vulnerable we are. When consciously thinking about it, any reasonable person knows they aren’t invincible, yet it takes a lot to internalize this on a subconscious level. Unfortunately, forgetting how vulnerable we are can lead to extreme consequences. I got a glimpse of those consequences when I fell asleep on the road. A young man experienced the worst of those consequences speeding on his motorcycle. My friend’s brother, however, got first-hand experience witnessing how vulnerable we all are. The incident he was in stuck with him and made him a safer driver as a result. Unfortunately, I don’t know an easy way to make yourself internalize your own mortality. The best solution I can offer is this: when harm or disaster does strike you or those around you, take the time to reflect on it. Was there something you or someone else could’ve done to prevent it? Could the damage done have at least been mitigated? Are you lucky? How much worse could it have been? This is the kind of reflection I aimed to do by writing this essay, hopefully it gives you something to think about.