Growing Up Desensitized

Picture this, being a young child and hearing your parents on the phone clearly distraught. You recognize your parents talking to your aunt about your cousin, the mention of alcohol and “it was just an accident” comes up. Instantly you know what happened, your cousin got in a crash from drinking and driving. This happened to me many times throughout my childhood, one day it would be a cousin, the next a distant relative, and eventually down the line, my classmates. There was always a young person around me that ended up in horrific accidents due to their own negligence of safety. I sadly realized I am not alone in this, according to the National Safety Council’s Injury Facts, “In 2022, the number of people dying in crashes involving at least one young driver totaled 5,339…”. While the article goes on to state that this number is a decrease from past statistics, it is still an alarming amount of loss that should not be happening. These events and facts were constantly on my mind when it came time for me to start driving. I always wondered if there was something that could be done to stop the constant cycle of pain.

Despite my thinking that these feelings were mutual, many of my peers would question why I cared so much. For the uninitiated, I grew up in a small town in Texas. In places like this, if you were not a reckless driver to some extent, your classmates would make fun of you for being “no fun”. Anytime I would hear these statements I would just feel happy for them that they have not experienced great loss or heartache as a result of reckless driving. Multiple times in my life have I received the news that one of my cousins is in the hospital from crashing after drinking. There was one specific time I remember around Christmas my aunt calling and telling me and my parents that my cousin did not come home one night. They ended up finding him in a ditch with broken ribs and slowly freezing to death. We were later told that he drove home intoxicated and crashed his truck. Him and my aunt spent Christmas in the hospital that year. Around the same time this situation happened, we had another disaster in the family, sadly this one became more permanent. A more distant cousin of mine ended up in the same situation, driving recklessly with alcohol involved, but this time he was not wearing a seatbelt. After he inevitably wrecked, he ended up in a coma in the hospital. While he and that part of my family lived too far away for us to visit, we received frequent updates that were not sounding so good. Even after he ended up awake from the coma, we were informed that he was paralyzed and would be unable to walk or feel any part of his body from his waist down. These are just two occurrences in my family where this has recently happened. As I have grown up I have seen and heard about more people around me getting into these accidents. All of these horrific accidents and horrible events are why I care immensely about this nation-wide driving issue. I have spent countless hours thinking about what could be done.

Due to all this thinking, and the situations that have happened around me, I made mental notes when I was in high school about my peers’ views and actions regarding drivers ed, and the results saddened me. For some context, I attended an in person driving school where I had an hour class everyday except Fridays for a month straight. After this, I had to do five assisted driving sessions with an instructor. I then took the test with the driving school teacher after all of this. Now, after all my years of high school, I was the only student I knew who attended a driving school in person. Every other one of my classmates who I witnessed getting their license did it through an online program. I realize that online programs are more convenient and better for some family’s schedules and every person involved, but the problem comes from my classmates. I would witness them play a course video containing vital information about road safety, but they would just mute the video, and switch the tabs on their computer. This saddened me every time I witnessed it, it was even worse when I saw them receive their license a few months later. Drivers ed is vital for young drivers to understand laws, signs, and rules of the road and seeing these people completely miss out on that is scary. This information I have learned has kept me safe through my driving experiences, in fact I do not know if I would still be alive if I attempted to drive with none of what I learned in that month. All of my classmates deserve the access to the engaged learning I had. I know if every young driver had that access, the roads would be a lot safer. Although these unengaging online courses are possibly the biggest factor relating to uneducated drivers, I believe there could be more steps taken.

I think the culture around driving is to blame, at least where I am from. Driving reckless here is seen as a sport in a way. At high schools it is known which students are seen as problems or reckless drivers. Many of my classmates would even talk to some of our teachers about driving without a license, under the influence, and wrecking their parent’s cars. Young people like this should be reported to authorities immediately to help situations like this. The general culture around driving should be taken more seriously rather than just seen as a sport of who can be more reckless. Another big cultural shift that is needed is drivers’ patience and understanding of each other. Before the culture is changed around driving, there is another massive system that needs changing to help improve driving, focusing on expanding public transportation in the United States. According to the American Public Transportation Association, 45% of Americans have no access to public transportation. This problem makes it to where obtaining a driver’s license is the only reliable option to travel from place to place. Funding public transport across the United States would evenly distribute the amount of people traveling daily between highways, bus routes, subways, and more. In 2003, the automobile corporation Saturn released a commercial highlighting how much spaces cars take up versus the amount of people that actually get transported in that space and how inefficient they are. While the actual commercial was made to highlight the small, compact nature of this company, “what we end up seeing is a very strong argument against the car altogether”(Mudede). However, if public transportation was put to the forefront of development in the US, there would be less wasted space from cars, more areas for community spaces, and better overall transportation accommodations for the whole country.

Although there would be resistance to it, I truly believe if we improved these aspects of our country, the culture and community around driving would improve immensely. Many would question why there needs to be a change, and they would be met with people like me telling our tragic stories and sad events in life that could have easily been prevented. If our world had better public transit and the culture was reformed around driving, maybe my cousins would still be able to live normal lives. Our world would be made so much safer if drivers and people in general became more alert, understanding, and willing to use their knowledge to keep everyone safe. Every person deserves to come home safe to their families, not have a police officer greet them with news instead.