Phoebe Bridgers

My first car was a used 2016 Chrysler 200 named Phoebe Bridgers with a whopping 172,000 miles. She was perfect, and I couldn’t have been more grateful. I had spent a long time continuing to pay off the car knowing that it wouldn’t last very long with the state of its engine and mileage. Not only was it impossible to find a good used car, but I needed something to commute to a school outside of my busing zone. It was my responsibility to get myself to school every day, but I managed, and my love for my car was larger than life.

To afford Phoebe, I worked a job at a company that took advantage of my time and broke multiple underaged labor laws in the process. I was pretty miserable, but not having a personal income for car insurance and payments wasn’t an option.

I was coming home from a brutal eight-hour shift on a blazing hot Wednesday afternoon when I turned into my neighborhood, just a half-mile from home. On the route I took multiple times a week, a negligent woman ran a yield sign while speeding down a residential street and hit me. She totaled my car when I was going 25 miles an hour.

I knew what had happened to me, but I didn’t want to believe it. The car I had loved so dearly crumpled like a piece of paper to protect me. I crawled out of the mess of a shattered dashboard and deployed airbags to a disaster. “Did you call 9-1-1?” she shouted at me. I stood there in front of her with tears effortlessly flowing down my cheek. “You hit me,” I said, deadpan. “Did you not see the sign?” My anger rose over the agonizing horn blaring from her car. She turned away and walked across the street in an attempt to ignore me. I pulled out my phone to call the police, but they were already heading towards me as my shaking hands typed out the three numbers I’d never used. I broke out hysterically as a witness came running to the scene. “I worked so hard for that car,” I wailed, dropping onto the grass. The man hugged me and told me I was safe and that I should be grateful. How could I be grateful? I was only 17, and I felt so betrayed. I knew that car accidents are most common for youth, but it wasn’t my fault. I felt like I needed to convince the officer that I wasn’t in the wrong, even though this was obvious. I know that if I were ever to cause such a frightening scene, I would apologize to the person I hit. I wish I had the chance to give her my grievances, to help her understand how badly she hurt my situation.

She received two points on her license, but two points were not equal to what she had taken from me. I was crushed and didn’t sort out my new car until months later. Not only did I lose my vehicle, but I lost the sense of security I had while driving. Learning to drive was a nerve-wracking experience that took me nearly a year to overcome throughout my driver’s training process. Now, I am forced to overcome these fears once again. Looking back, I am grateful for my safety and the nice insurance check, but I will never underestimate the power of a “mistake.” I drive differently now that I acknowledge the impact of an accident or an oversight. I was lucky to have the proper insurance and documentation, but the consequences of an accident could be much worse for someone else. A car accident could be what pushes an underprivileged family into losing their home or someone losing their life. I walked away physically unharmed but mentally bruised from the consequences of another person’s actions.

A common theme in our modern world includes being fully distracted in multiple ways. It is so easy to be ungrounded and dissociated from the present moment, and the influence of cell phones is certainly adding fuel to the flame. Accidents like the distracted driver I experienced will only grow with time, despite legislature preventing it. In my home state of Michigan, our governor recently passed a distracted driving law to combat the use of devices while driving, but as a citizen, I certainly haven’t noticed the difference. There seems to only be one way that we can learn to become more attentive drivers, and that sadly is through experience.