Before the Unmentionable: Driver Education as a tool for reality

The thing that people overlook about being in an accident is the guilt that follows. No matter the size of the accident, from fender bender to total collision, there is a cold dread that sneaks up on you from the possibility of what could’ve been, as well as a loss of security from someone bursting the bubble of being in an autonomous vehicle.

I was in an accident a month before my 18th birthday. I was coming home from work. The streets were wet and slick and unusually empty as it had just stopped raining. My GPS told me to take a detour home, and I followed its voice until I hit a new intersection. The traffic lights were out because of the rain, and a tree branch had fallen, obscuring the stop sign at the end of the way. I yielded, but I still wasn’t able to see the car on the left. The sound of crunching metal still rings in my head when I drive.

I was very, very lucky. No one was hurt in the accident. The two cars suffered significant damage, but a police and fire unit arrived within minutes and cleared us out. Since I was a minor who had run a stop sign, I went to juvenile court where the judge asked me to go to a driver reeducation class. The police officer who issued me my ticket had told me that it would be okay if I missed the court appearance as he wouldn’t be there to serve as witness, but my dad agreed that I should understand the full extent of bad driving. To this day, I think the class was one of the most transformative experiences of my life.

The crux of my driver education had been during the COVID-19 pandemic, and so I felt as if I missed a significant amount of driving experience. My defensive drivers instructor opened our 8-hour long course by asking what we were all in for, and most of my peers had been speeding. They always concluded with “but I was on the way to a charitable event,” or “it’s the fault of the government speed traps and not mine.” I couldn’t believe that my peers had still excused their actions despite the damage their accidents had caused.

During that class, we spent our time watching car crash videos and police tapes, and went around the room speaking vulnerably about ourselves and the people we cared about. Nobody mentioned ourselves when we spoke about someone we wanted to protect while driving. Nobody mentioned how the bodies from the police tapes looked like us and our families. Nobody wanted to think about it.

When our class concluded, I felt as if I had learned a completely new facet of driver education that was not included in my high school education. While the high school curriculum involved the nuts and bolts about driving, we hadn’t quite reached the same level of vulnerability or introspection required of us because of the pandemic. Therefore, it was easier to brush off the warnings about teenage arrogance and the horror stories of a crash gone wrong. The more I talk to people my age about the dangers of driving, the more I hear similar stories about their accidents, and ways they wish they would’ve prevented it. Although we can take the steps to drive safer by staying off of our phone and obeying the speed limits, it is also worth it to take a driving class to freshen up our memory and remember the dangers of the road. Most of the people in my class were adults, and although they had to renew their license every 8 years, it would be incredible to have that incentive for a more frequent reminder. Everyone, from the people in my driving class to the police officer that issued the ticket, were incredibly lax about the consequences of disregarding driving safety practices because the consequences don’t manifest until the very extremes. Every day, we take our lives into our hands, and sometimes we become distracted and make mistakes. At what point do mistakes become accidents? The visual aids that are presented in driver education classes are essential to form associations to those extremes without having to carry the burden of your own actions. Furthermore, it can be the smallest things that determine the fate of your drive. It would also be beneficial to have a frequent reminder of the rules of the road: from speed limits, to policies about bright lights and the need for seat belts. It can be obvious to others but not ourselves typical driving etiquette, and we need to address bad practices before they become bad habits.

The next summer, two of my friends passed away in two separate car accidents. I don’t know the details, but I know that their loss has left an insurmountable void in the communities they inhabited. Sometimes, I wonder why it was them and not me that summer two years ago. It is only with that reflection through driver education that we can begin to associate our time behind the wheel with the responsibility for every other life on the roads we occupy.