What Driving School Doesn’t Prepare You For

All I could do while growing up was wait for the day I got my license. Driving seemed so fun to me as a child, but I didn’t realize the dangers and how scary it was until I got my license. I cried my first time driving with my temps. The other cars felt so close to me, going 25 mph felt like 100 mph, and the turns were surprisingly scary too. I wish I had known what was to come for me and my friends when I was a child getting so excited to drive.

I got my driver’s license on December 2, 2022. Four days later, a senior at my high school and a girl I grew up going to school with and would consider a friend, both died in a car accident. I stared in shock at my phone, sitting on my bedroom floor for an hour not knowing what to do. I got a text from my older sister, “If you want me to drive you to school tomorrow, I can.” The school was silent the next day. Their lockers were already decorated, and a candlelight vigil was being planned. I walked up to the best friend of the girl in my grade who passed. She was staring at the decorated locker and the pile of flowers and notes on the floor in front of it. Sniffles and whispers filled the hallway. The candlelight vigil was later that week, I drove there, eyes glued to the road, and hands glued to the wheel. I will never forget the look on her mom’s face. The scream she let out once she saw the pictures of her youngest daughter surrounded by candles and flowers is engraved in my brain. School hasn’t been the same since we lost those two amazing girls, and even though they weren’t my best friends, I miss them every day.

The winter and spring months slowly drug by after the accident. Just five months later, on May 1, 2023, I was on my way to cheer tryouts when someone ran a stop sign and pulled out in front of me. As I laid on the horn in hopes of making the driver realize someone was barreling towards her, I remember staring at the bumper of the stranger’s car, inches away, and thinking to myself, “Well, I’m gonna hit her.” I was not badly injured at all, I got off lucky for rear-ending someone at about 55 mph. It took me a second for me to realize what had happened. Dust from the airbag filled my car and, ironically, the Luke Combs cover of Fast Car. My hand stung from the airbag’s impact, and my right hip was sore from the jolt of energy through the brake pedal. I immediately called my mom and got out of my car, thanking anything and everything in the universe that my crash didn’t kill me. I stared at my car, my prized possession that I had named Doug the Bug (a yellow Volkswagen Beetle), was smashed up in the front, with a headlight missing, and a possibly busted radiator. I hugged my family tighter that night, realizing that day could’ve ended a lot worse than it did. As I became more comfortable with driving, I started to notice how many of my friends were getting their licenses taken away for speeding or causing minor crashes that were easily avoidable. The saying “No cop, no stop” angers me more than anything else, because they don’t understand that running a stop sign or red light can easily end someone’s life in a split second.

At the end of my junior year of high school, the entire class of 2025 was getting so excited for the summer before senior year. I was looking forward to going to Florida a few weeks after school let out, and then going to my last year of summer camp. It was a normal Monday when I got a text from one of my good friends, “omg did you hear about Jason???!!!” My heart instantly sank, and I knew what had happened before she even responded. Once again, I sat on my floor, staring at the news article she sent me about how one of my childhood friends had died after being ejected from a moving vehicle. I grew up with Jason, we were in almost every class together throughout elementary school. Stories on Snapchat started to flood with pictures and videos honoring Jason. A cross was soon set up where the crash was. I felt guilty for leaving for my Florida trip and missing the candlelight vigil. Jason was a friend to everybody and never knew a stranger, and I regret it every day that I let us grow apart because he truly was one of my best friends when we were younger.

So when people complain about driving school or having to go to in-cars and drive around with a stranger, I sit there and think that there should be more hours needed. Teenagers think they know everything. It is impossible to truly warn them about how dangerous driving is. I miss my classmates every day, even if we weren’t best friends, the hallways are quieter and the school is emptier.