Not Just Numbers

Gaining a license should not be an easy process. It should be full of studying the rules of the road, and hard work. This may cause many people to roll their eyes, but I believe in this idea wholeheartedly. Everybody knows that the number one cause of teen deaths is driving, but in modern days we have become desensitized to many things. We may hear facts, like that “In 2018, almost 2,500 teens in the United States aged 13–19 were killed, and about 285,000 were treated in emergency departments for injuries suffered in motor vehicle crashes” (CDC Website), but in many cases these fly over our heads. Although they’re big numbers, we can’t truly comprehend what it means until it happens in our personal lives. This is why driver’s education is so important. People who truly study driver’s ed will still have the chance to get in a car accident, but what they learned in drivers ed will always stick with them.

In my case, it saved my life.

For the past two years I had been working towards the shiny new card that was now in my hands. My driver’s license. It had finally arrived in the mail. I immediately wanted to go and get out on the road, so I took my brother for some froyo at the nearby Orange Leaf. I felt free, like I could soon go anywhere and do whatever I wanted. It was now made possible by this new license that I had finally achieved. For a while it went smoothly, as I vowed to never drive distracted, and never become one of those numbers. No matter how much I truly thought I had it under control, one day I realized I didn’t.

I was driving home from work, tired from a stress filled week. Night had blanketed the suburbs, a few stars twinkling, seeming to watch over as they blinked in curiosity. As I changed lanes to make a left turn, my brain felt foggy, and I looked up at the blinking yellow stoplight.

Yield. Easy enough.

What I failed to realize was that the blinking light meant I should never have made my turn.

The first time I glanced up, I noticed no cars, then pressed on the gas.

The second time will remain in my memory forever. Headlights were staring me directly in the face and the only thing I could wonder was why in the world that car was so close to me.

I breaked, something I remembered distinctly from my driver’s ed, and held on tightly to the steering wheel for the impact. As the large white van struck me, I closed my eyes, and when they opened the first feeling I had was straight fear. The smell from the explosive airbag hit my nose, and as I had never been in a crash before I thought my car was on fire. Stumbling out of the drivers side, I looked frantically at the scene before the people in the car behind me came to my aid. The entire night felt like it was taken directly out of a movie scene. I didn’t know what would happen next. Would I be going to jail? Would I be heavily fined? Had I injured someone? I tried to look at the other car to make sure nobody was hurt or even worse, dead. Without realizing, thick tears were rolling down my cheeks as I studied all the scenarios that could possibly derive from this accident. I had heard all the stories of how one could get involuntary manslaughter from something as simple as looking at the wrong thing at the wrong time while driving.

Involuntary manslaughter.

Let those words ring in your head once more. No young teenager should have to even think that they might be the cause of the end of somebody’s life by an accident. Yet there I was, desperately praying that it was not going to happen to me as it had already happened to so many before me.

As the paramedics arrived and the police, thankfully I learned that nobody had been hurt. I spoke with the officers and we went our separate ways, letting the insurance handle the damages. Although the accident had been ruled my fault, I still felt terrible for even placing the other family in this kind of situation.

Later I realized that both cars had pressed on their breaks because of the way the impact had settled. This had truly saved all of our lives, because if either one had accelerated, the damage would have increased exponentially. I realized that in times of panic, the driver’s ed that I had studied (as well as the other kid) had come to use even through all the adrenaline.

As one can see, educated driving is extremely valuable. My experience is not meant to keep anybody from driving, but instead meant to reinforce the message that it can happen to you. You might be thinking about froyo in one second, and involuntary manslaughter the next. Driver’s education, quality education, have the power to stop any driver from becoming just a number.