“Ya Live and Ya Learn”

I can remember the smell of hot metal and burnt rubber like it was yesterday. The way it crept into my nostrils as I came to, wondering why the world looked so blurry. My glasses had flown off of my face, making it impossible to identify the person calling my name from outside of the car. I turned to look at my driving instructor, who was barely blinking his eyes open, and the girl in the backseat. Her eyes were as wide as tires as she used a shaking hand to pick up her phone and call her mom. I see that Mr. Bundy, my driver’s education teacher, is conscious. “Was that my fault, Mr. Bundy?”

“No, Fae. He ran a stop sign.”

“Oh.” I said. As I sat in the driver’s seat, I found that the car had spun into the middle of the intersection, and the airbag was shoving my head rather uncomfortably to the left, “Okay. That’s good.”

When I was learning how to drive, a week before my sixteenth birthday, one of my classmates t-boned our car. His name is Brendon, and needless to say, we don’t talk much. It was my very first day of instructional driving. It was the only time in thirty years of driver’s ed that Mr. Bundy had been hit. It was traumatic; not only in the event that happened, but how my mental state was altered by such an accident.

We were extremely lucky in that no one sustained any life-threatening injuries. The car was wrecked beyond saving, and Brendon cried hard enough to cure a drought. However, it seemed like everyone in my life was over it in an hour, even Mr. Bundy. He got us another car and we were back to driving practice the next day. This wasn’t shocking to me, as the man had been doing this every week for thirty years. However, what bothered me the most was how the police didn’t seem to care much either.

Brendon did not have his license yet. He only had a learner’s permit when he hit us, and a dog in his lap that he blamed for distracting him. Enough to make him unaware of a stop sign that had been there since before he was born, in the town he grew up in. Driving by himself, let alone nearly killing people, was a criminal offense. I should know, I went to elementary school with the guy. As I stood on the sidewalk, legs shaking, the driver’s ed car looking more banana-shaped than a car ever should, I was horrified.

I was in a car wreck. I was t-boned by a distracted driver and stuck for who knows how long in a totaled vehicle, the boy’s front bumper crammed into the side of our car. I could have died that day. There was a chance that my life could have ended. And he was crying?

I learned the next week that he thought his permit was going to be taken away. That seems reasonable, right? When you’re fifteen, all you want to do is earn the freedom to drive. However, when you run stop signs and crush tiny tin-can driver’s ed cards with your pickup truck because you illegally let your pet dog sit shotgun, then things might not go your way. I was fully expecting Brendon to have to re-do driver’s education, or have his permit revoked, or at least suspended.

It was in my high-school parking lot a week later that I discovered his freedom had not been tainted. Because it was two days after my birthday, I had received my driver’s license! I was ecstatic, driving my little Hyundai Accent all on my own for the first time out of the junior lot. I had never checked my blind spots with such enthusiasm, and when it was finally my turn to merge in, a flash of silver wooshed past. A truck cruised through, cutting me off, barely a centimeter away from clipping my right mirror. Adrenaline shot through me, filling me with fearful memories of last week’s incident. I looked ahead in anger, and in the shiny, brand-new pick up truck in front of me, Brendon stared ahead without a care. My blood boiled so hot, I thought I would put scorch marks in my seat.

How was he driving? Why was he driving? Who let him keep his permit, and who bought him a brand new truck after what had happened just a week ago? I raged for days afterward, glaring daggers at him each time I saw him in the hall. However, it has taken me quite a while to realize that, maybe, this wasn’t entirely his fault. Had our driver’s ed class taught more common sense and responsibility, maybe this could have never happened. The way it is now, he experiences no remorse for what he has done, just regret that it ever occured. He has never apologized to me. Distracted driving kills. I am a very lucky person in that I was not severely injured by my accident, but had that scenario played out differently, I would not be alive or well-abled today.

There are more ways to drive distracted than just a phone, one being having a dog in your lap, for example. Currently, there is no law in Utah (where I live) that requires an animal to be caged or restrained while operating a vehicle, but I hope that someday my request for change on this matter will be heard.

I wish he had had his permit suspended. I wish he had to do some sort of course or re-teaching, one that would make him less likely to commit this offense again. I wish he didn’t walk away from this story less emotional than me; in fact, he walked away with a new car and no consequences.

I know that I, personally, can be a better driver by keeping an extra level of awareness about me when I drive. Even though we didn’t have a stop sign and Brendon did, a truck hurtling toward us at forty miles per hour with no intention of braking should have been something that I at least noticed. We currently live in a driver’s society where we can’t expect everyone around us to show the same level of courtesy and respect on the road, and that is something that I think we can all improve upon.