Great Power, Great Responsibility

Great
Power, Great Responsibility

Millions
of people throughout the world are far more powerful than they
realize. It’s not necessarily a matter of money or race or
education. It’s a power gained by the ownership of a specific type
of large machinery that can be found inside our houses or just
outside our front door. They’re operated everyday, their fatal
potential often disregarded, or worse, ignored. It’s our cars.

Here
in Texas, every teen is required to participate in 32 hours of
classroom instruction and then 40 more hours of actual driving
practice. One of the videos we watch for drivers ed features a
teenage girl, Jacqueline Saburido, who was riding on the Interstate
with her friends when a drunk, underage driver hit their car. After
all of her friends were rescued, and just before Jacqueline could get
out, the entire vehicle went up in flames. She died just last year in
April, but she lived out the remaining 20 years of her life with no
hair, no ears, no fingers, and nameless other body parts. The
majority of her vision was also gone. Although instilling fear in
people usually isn’t the way to handle problems, I’d rather just
be scared by this story than actually live it. It’s important that
we see the consequences of our actions.

Lots
of my peers drive recklessly, hitting 90 mph in an area with a 60 mph
at a quarter until midnight, trying to make it home before curfew.
I’m sure their parents would be much more devastated if they never
made it home at all. Others do it and say it’s a stress reliever.
When other things in life become too tough, their car is the one
thing they have control over. But the average car weighs 2,900 pounds
and a human weighs in at about 140 lb. Given the slightest of wrong
moves, a car would clearly win that fight.

I
don’t think that people are evil or that most of us truly forget
the power we hold when we sit in the driver’s seat. We all remember
the first time we drove, scared to make the slightest wrong move. Now
we barely put any thought into it. Now we don’t hesitate to mess
with music or reach into a bag, while steering down the highway at 70
mph.

Too
often, we take cars for granted. They’re a quick and convenient way
to get somewhere, a flashy new thing to show off to peers. There’s
one fact that we tend to omit from our brains — cars are dangerous.
Obviously in society — or at least the area I live in — we can’t
abandon cars completely since they’re our only option for getting
around, but we could certainly afford to appreciate more. We are
blessed to have the opportunity to drive cars, privileged to live in
a country that is so accessible to them, and most of all powerful to
have control over such a dangerous piece of machinery. And with great
power, comes great responsibility.