The Reality of Driving

Being granted the ability to drive a car can be a freeing experience. When I was little, I looked forward to being able to go wherever I wanted, whenever I wanted the day I turned 16. As I grew older, I realized that this privilege could also be an opportunity for danger, and the fantasy I had created in my mind became less vibrant.

I lived in Nashville with my mom and dad until the age of 4, when they divorced and my mom and I moved to Raleigh. As a result of the custody battle, I was forced to board a plane by myself starting at 5 years old, at least twice a month, to go visit my dad. By the time I was 12, I had taken over 170 plane rides alone. While living at my dad’s house, I had to learn to take care of myself. He was emotionally abusive and neglectful, putting me in unsafe situations from a very early age. He often drank irresponsibly, and I would answer the court mandate Facetime calls from my mother from inside a bar at night when I was 5 or 6. My mom couldn’t do anything about the situation with my father except drain her savings battling him in court, for interfering with the parenting plan could make things worse.

As I grew older, the neglect and emotional abuse from my father became more frequent. When I was 12, he moved to Raleigh, and his custody was increased. One night not long after he had moved, he made me go to a Christmas party with him where he got drunk. When it was time to leave the party, he left me no choice but to get in the car with him to go back home. I didn’t know the hosts very well and calling my mom to come get me would result in a screaming match with a drunk and unpredictable man. While going down the road, I quickly realized how inebriated he was as he swerved in and out of the lanes and struggled to put full sentences together. I was genuinely fearful for my life that night. And I was lucky enough to have made it home safely. When I was 15, I testified in court against him in court, bringing up this very night to the judge in addition to other testimony of his dangerous and neglectful behavior. As a result of my three years of preparation with my lawyer, my testimony was effective and his visitation was greatly reduced.

Freshman year, I was thrilled to have made the highest-level club volleyball team in my age division. A few days later, I was diagnosed with a stress fracture in my spine. The treatment for this entailed several months without playing and wearing a custom back brace. The brace immobilized my entire torso and made going to school extremely uncomfortable. Starting my first year of high school in a clunky brace was not what I had planned.

During my recovery, I was in a hit-and-run accident on the highway. My mom was driving and we were on the way to my dad’s house because it was one of his weekends. I had my school and volleyball bags packed in the backseat and I was wearing my back brace while riding in the front. It was broad daylight on a Friday afternoon with very little traffic. We were driving in the far right lane on a major three-lane highway and a car from the middle lane swerved and knocked us off the road completely. It seemed like they came out of nowhere and I thought I had just had some sort of hallucination. I immediately covered my face with my hands as we flipped twice and just barely missed the guardrail. I could hear the snapping sounds of what I thought were branches, but it might have just been the plastic pieces outside the car breaking off. When we stopped moving, I opened my eyes and was hit with the stench of airbag smoke. I quickly remembered the difference in scent between smoke from a fire and smoke from an airbag. When I was five, my dad and I were in an accident at an intersection in Nashville where the airbags had gone off. My memory of that day was hazy, but the odor stuck with me.

I lifted my hands off my face to assess the situation. I had so much adrenaline pumping through my body that I wasn’t sure if I was hurt or not. My mom was in the driver’s seat, sitting with her side on the dirt because of how the car had flipped while I was suspended in the air by my seatbelt. I looked at my body to make sure all my limbs were still there and I could feel them all. All my mom and I could do was repeat “Oh my god, Oh my god.” She didn’t seem to have any life-threatening injuries either. We were locked into our seats by the seatbelts and we couldn’t un-buckle them to reach a phone. I had my Apple watch on my wrist so I called 911 using that when all of a sudden a group of strangers came up and tried to kick the windshield in. They were trying to help us but they were just making the shards of glass fly toward our faces, so I kept screaming them over and over again, “STOP STOP PLEASE STOP!” They stopped after we yelled at them for a few minutes and convinced them to wait for the firemen to arrive. One woman who had stopped to try and help us wouldn’t stop screaming about the car being on fire. She had mistaken the airbag smoke for fire smoke and was completely distraught. After we were taken out of the car and got into the ambulance, I looked at the scene and realized that the chance of me dying from that accident was probably much greater than me coming away from it as unscathed as I did.

Because I was wearing my back brace when we crashed, I had no internal injuries or bruising from dangling in the air by my seatbelt. When I was sitting in the ambulance, I asked my mom, “Where is the other car? Are they okay?” She said, “Ava there is no other car they left.” I broke down into tears after holding it together until that moment. I was so confused as to how someone could cause an accident that from just looking at it, appeared to be the cause of death for two people and drive away unharmed. How could someone be so irresponsible, reckless, and selfish to drive away after shoving us off the road going 70 miles an hour? How could someone drive away not knowing if they just became a murderer or not?

I will never know why that individual drove away after hitting us. I will never understand how someone could act with so little regard for another person’s life and still go to sleep at night. I won’t ever understand why my dad treated me so poorly growing up or thought it was okay to drink and drive with his only child in the passenger seat next to him. Despite all of that, my experiences with dangerous driving have made me understand the importance of driver education and promoting safe driving practices. Because of my traumatic experiences regarding driving, I prioritize safe driving in my everyday life. Before I got a driver’s  license, I did a defensive driving course in Charlotte with my stepdad. There, I learned how to use the ABS to brake and steer, how to drive on ice, and how to quickly maneuver a vehicle around obstacles. I volunteer to drive my friends when we are going somewhere together because I know I am a responsible driver who will follow traffic laws to make navigating the roads as safe as possible. Brushing off the warnings from my mom about safe driving would be easy if I didn’t have those experiences while in the passenger seat of a vehicle. Because of what I went through, I have a unique understanding of why safe driving is so important.

I tell these same stories to my friends to explain to them why safe driving isn’t a joke, and why getting in a car is the most dangerous thing we do every single day. To reduce the number of deaths that occur as a result of unsafe driving, it is important to make all drivers understand that dying or being greatly injured as a result of a car accident is not rare. It could have happened to me that night with my dad or that afternoon with my mom, I was just lucky enough to live so that I could tell my stories in a way that hopefully motivates someone else to take responsible driving more seriously.