Knockdown

When life moves fast, people move faster. When life moves slow, people move faster. When the people around you move faster, you start moving faster. That’s the life of people driving down many of America’s highways and road networks. To them, speed limits are nuisances, not reminders to slow down and drive safely. It’s nearly every day where I see someone weaving through traffic, or ignoring some traffic law to get to their destination one minute quicker. But here’s a question: is that one minute worth a potential lifetime of suffering or knowing that someone else is suffering as a result of your actions?

Every time you or I get behind the wheel, we enter a warzone – arguably worse. More driving deaths occur in a single year than in the span of years during wars. We are missiles headed in a single direction, and all it takes is one malfunction or careless mistake to unwind everything. One of these missiles hit us.

It was around 8 am on a weekday morning and my dad was driving me and my younger brother to school that day. There’s this intersection near our highway that’s monitored by a speed camera tower, so we’re always cautious in that area in case someone pulls something risky. This day, being cautious didn’t help us. As the light turned red, we pressed the brakes, so as to not cross any intersection lines – the large white van behind us had other plans. Bam, we slid ten feet forward into the middle of the busiest intersection on the busiest road in the middle of weekday morning rush hour. We were rear ended. This was five years back, but I remember the moment like it was yesterday. The rear glass window disintegrated – even a skittle was big in comparison to the fragments of glass that was strewn out across the cabin. There’s not a single road busier at 8am on a weekday morning than the road we were on, so when we pulled off to the side, I was just in disbelief. The back of our car – a one year old SUV at the time, was completely caved in. The big white van on the other hand? Not a dent – not even a scratch. Like a missile, it causes more harm to the things it hits, that day I understood that.

Too many people are given the keys to cars they have no control over. They overestimate its breaking power and underestimate their speeds. I was lucky, rather, my family was lucky that day. There was a cop nearby that witnessed the whole accident, and I was able to show up to my first period class under half an hour late. If it was on a highway, or a t-bone, or some other car, or anything else, I don’t know if the outcome would be the same. But there are people who have accidents on the highways, get t-boned, flip over in a smaller car, or have a number of other things out of their control happen to them, and some of these people don’t make it home. They go to get the milk, to get dinner, to go to school, to go to work, and they never know if it’s a one way trip or not. Now that I drive, I understand this and it’s at the back of my mind, but I also understand it is important to not be afraid.

I was fortunate to have great mentors in teaching me to drive and being fortunate enough to be in a place where, when I was learning to drive, there would be no one else on the road at risk. I live in Fountain Hills, and as the name implies, there are hills, really steep hills. Within a one mile radius, there are at least ten, twenty degree hills, and if there’s one thing that teaches you the importance of speed control, it’s going down a hill. Let off the gas, and at the top of the hill you’re doing 25, without brakes, at the bottom you’re doing 40 in a residential neighborhood. This taught me my car’s capabilities, both in breaking and maintaining speed, and is something every driver should seek to understand, because if you don’t know what you’re driving, you won’t know what to do when it matters most.

My advice to new drivers and experienced drivers is the same – no matter how experienced you are, every time you get behind the wheel, your life is in your hands. Make the choices your mom tells you to make. Everyone thinks they are an F1 driver, until they are not. Skip the phone, take a pit stop and then use your phone. Drop the beers, there are no cheers if you don’t make it home. Last of all, be confident. Know your abilities as a driver, so that when there is someone that doesn’t, you protect yourself and your family.

“Speed has never killed anyone. Suddenly becoming stationary, that’s what gets you” – Jeremy Clarkson.