Safety on the Road

Abigail Alpern

Saftey on the Road

I am six. I accidentally knock over a drink in the car. Red Kool-Aid spills through the seats and my uncle looks back at me. We swerve, and my seatbelt catches me, and I am safe.

I am nine. I sit in the back seat of my mother’s car, ready for my first day of school. We had just finished taking pictures of our cute, new backpacks and hairstyles, which made us very late. We speed faster to the building. I am safe.

I am thirteen. My older sister calls my mother in a panic. Mom and dad run out of the house, searching for her along the roads barely three miles from our house. She hit a deer, but she is safe.

I am fourteen. My mother calls me and tells me not to worry. I worry anyways. I go home with my best friend, not understanding why my mother wasn’t there to pick me up. It is nearly midnight when my father finally comes to get me. I don’t see mother’s bruises until days later. The airbag had pushed her keys into her leg, bruising her thigh and stomach. A man had run a red light and hit my mother’s car. My little sister was there; she was barely ten. She never should have gone through that. ‘Nice’ ladies bring food over because mom can’t cook or move. They pity us. The car was totaled, but they are safe.

I am fifteen. My little sister can’t go through the place where the accident happened without closing her eyes shut. She remembers it. I wasn’t there, and yet I remember it. We all do.

I am seventeen. I get into the car and turn the key. I have been taught and I am ready. I will never put another person in danger due to my driving. Driver’s education is more than a class or a requirement. It is what keeps children from having to watch their mother recover from something that wasn’t her fault. It is what guards the streets and holds us together.

We need to focus and get our acts together, because nothing is so important as to risk a life. I strive to be the safest driver I possibly can be, and I always will. Because driving doesn’t only affect the driver- it affects the world around them. Being educated from the moment you turn the key to the moment you park is what keeps people around you safe, and to not take the time to educate oneself is to blatantly disregard the lives of others.