Reflections from the Passenger’s Seat

Reflections From the Passenger’s Seat

Coggin Galbreath

Every summer, coming home from college to visit my parents feels more like one of those magic tricks with the cups and the balls. The balls are my parents, my sisters, me, and lately our dogs, who have as many appointments and social engagements as anyone else in the family. The cups are a pristine Honda Odyssey and a dinged up Subaru Outback, between which the five of us (plus dogs) are shuffled and shunted and switched around until it is impossible to keep track of where everyone is at any given time. In rural Texas, you truly cannot go anywhere without a car. As the world reopens post-pandemic, getting everyone where they need to go has come to require elaborate, heist-level coordination.

There used to be a third car: my car. A white ’98 Chevy Suburban, born the same year as me. My grandma picked me up from preschool in that car before it was my aunt’s, then my dad’s, and then mine. We called it the Spirit of Adventure, since it was roughly the size and shape of the blimp in the movie Up—big enough that my sisters and I used to open the double doors in the back and have seated dinners in the trunk. That was my car until Christmas Eve 2018, when, driving home from my grandma’s house in a light rain with me in the passenger’s seat and my sisters in the back, my dad took a turn too fast and we barrel-rolled into a ditch.

Thankfully we landed right-side-up and, in the long run, everyone was okay. But my dad suffered serious post-concussive syndrome, all of us were traumatized and cut up from crawling out the windows, and dazedly collecting Christmas presents from the side of the road by police lights is not an experience I’ll soon forget. And of course, the Spirit of Adventure would never fly again. It wasn’t until I went to see it in the junkyard with the roof smashed in and the windows broken that I realized how easily any one of us could have died that night.

The thing is, I knew my dad had a tendency to speed. Right before the crash, I knew he was going too fast but I didn’t want to say anything. Thankfully he was wearing a seatbelt that night. Often he didn’t, and I noticed, but kept quiet—just like I noticed when my mom used her phone at the wheel but was too embarrassed to call her out.

I think we’re all a little terrified of how dangerous driving really is. In order to keep getting in cars, we tell ourselves that accidents—bad accidents—don’t just happen. They happen because of drunk drivers, or vehicle failures, or downright recklessness. In reality though, both of my scariest driving experiences have involved going slightly too fast on a slightly wet surface. Now, I don’t tell myself to chill out when I’m in a car with an irresponsible driver. I remind myself that it never feels like the day you’re going to crash—until it is. So I ask them to slow down or put a seatbelt on. Sometimes I offer to drive. It can be awkward, especially with a parent or friend, but it is a small price to pay to avoid another experience like the one I had three years ago. This is the single greatest step we can take to reduce the number of deaths on the road: finding the courage to graciously but firmly hold the drivers we love accountable.

Of course, that means holding yourself accountable too. I do not speed and I am a religious seat-belter, but I know I have a tendency to get distracted. I’m not good with directions, and the temptation to mess with my GPS is irresistible. After that night, though, I just pull over: to check directions, to put on music, to make a phone call, whatever. As someone who cannot leave the house on time but hates to be late, I used to work myself into a lather trying to save time by multitasking on the road. Now I know that crashing is one of the most time-consuming things you can do in a car. Since losing the Spirit, I’ve been learning to slow down.

I am a very anxious person, and I often perceive a high level of risk where the risk is actually very low. I do not trust myself to have an accurate sense of danger, which is probably why I told myself to be quiet instead of speaking up when people I knew drove recklessly. This, for me, is why education is so important. Good driver education not only equips you to drive responsibly, it helps you form a clear understanding of the risks involved and the fine line between a near miss and a fatal crash. You can’t wait until you’re in the passenger’s seat to decide what kind of behavior you can accept in a driver, and you can’t wait until you’re in the driver’s seat to decide what kind of driver you are. Those are decisions you have to make before you ever come near a car. Education is key: if you know that wearing a seatbelt reduces your risk of fatal injury by 45% (National Highway Traffic Administration, 2019), it is easier to ask a parent to buckle up. If you know that over 20% of crashes are weather-related, and 70% of those happen on wet pavement (US Department of Transportation, 2017), it is easier to ask them to slow down.

I love the freedom that driving gives me. I think it is wonderful to approach the road with a “spirit of adventure.” But driving safely takes more than caution—it takes courage and conviction to save lives by sticking up for what you know. When everyone does that, drivers and passengers alike, our roads will be a much safer place.