A Harrowing Experience of Distracted Driving: My Story

My mother groggily shook me awake one winter morning, informing me to wake my older brother up to take me to school, as she was catching a cold. What happened in the following two hours could be described as nothing short of a miracle. I wish I could say that it was snow or a deer that jumped in front of us, which was a far too common occurrence in the suburban roads of Charleston, West Virginia. Instead, it was an easily preventable, and almost fatal mistake.

I hurriedly got dressed that morning and ran downstairs to wake my brother up to drive us to school, a drive that should have taken ten minutes. As we got in the car, I put on my seatbelt, which I didn’t often do on such a short trip, and that simple action may have been the only reason I am still alive today. My brother had connected his phone to the stereo, to play music, which I hadn’t experienced with my mother’s driving. It was fun. Unfortunately, that fun was cut short before we had the chance to leave the neighborhood. My brother had reached for his phone to change the song and lost control of the car. We swerved across the road, and the car flipped off the street and into a ditch, leading into a neighbor’s front lawn. The only thing stopping us from sliding across the slick grass from the morning dew and into their home was a single tree stump that had been partially cut down.

As a kid simply on his way to his third-grade class, I was completely shocked by the situation, which was completely surreal in my eyes. The image of the windshield shattering and my brother’s gloved hands flying off the steering wheel is permanently ingrained in my mind. It was almost instant, the webbing of the windshield as we were inverted, and suddenly, we realized we were dangling from the seats, only being held by our seat belts. I quickly undid my seatbelt and ensured we were all okay. Miraculously, nobody had gotten seriously injured, and my brother only had scars from the seatbelt and some cuts from the driver-side window shattering. Very soon we realized another problem – we had no way of getting out. The driver’s side doors of my brother’s bright red Toyota RAV4 had been crushed by the impact and were stuck. The windshield and roof of the car were now our floor, and the back windshield was completely shattered and was missing some glass. Luckily, my brother was able to force open the passenger door, and we were able to climb out. Once out of the car, we had to call our parents to come pick us up, and I stood next to the car, the right rear tire next to my head, and we climbed out of the ditch. From the road, the crash was barely visible, something that the tow truck driver had noted when he came to remove the vehicle from our neighbor’s yard.

At the time, I had such a little grasp of the situation, and looking back, I laugh, that I still went to school that day, going on with my life as if nothing had happened, which makes sense, as I was very much in denial about the reality of the situation. When the police officers came to take my parents’ statements later that day, they were amazed that the passengers of the car had lived, and even more shocked that we were relatively untouched. However, our case was a rare exception. The harsh reality of the situation is that people can be killed or seriously injured, sometimes resulting in irreversible brain damage or paralysis in car accidents every day.

Even though I was relatively young when that happened, I was mature enough to learn from the mistakes of the situation that almost ended my life. As someone who has just gotten their driver’s license a few years ago, I enacted those teaching moments by never being distracted by driving. I may be guilty of speeding slightly on occasion, but I never use my phone while driving. I always wear a seatbelt, regardless of how close a destination is. I drive defensively because I know that other drivers on the road may be distracted, as my brother was, and prepared to avoid them. For example, whenever I approach an intersection with low visibility, I ensure no drivers are approaching on either side before proceeding, which has saved me from potential accidents on countless occasions.

These safe driving measures will not only prevent you from crashing your vehicle and potentially harm you, your passengers, or another driver, but they also protect you from other dangers on the road, such as distracted or incapacitated drivers.