One accident can change your life.

By Mara Ball

Early the morning of September 25th, I encountered a scene that I will never forget.  I was driving alone on the Cross County Parkway, near Mt. Vernon.  Few cars were on the road at this time of day, but police activity had choked things down to one lane.  As I crept closer, it became clear that I was seeing the immediate aftermath of a tragedy.  One car, four passengers, three fatalities – two of which appeared to have been thrown from the vehicle.   Though I have not been in a car accident myself, nor have I been a passenger while someone else chose to drive irresponsibly, I cannot imagine that any such experience could illustrate the consequences of irresponsible driving as profoundly as the gruesome accident I saw.  And its effect was amplified when I later learned that one of the deceased was a girl my age.  

 

Though I have certainly benefited from driver education (both professional and informal instruction) nothing that I encountered in those contexts was nearly as powerful as my exposure to the Cross County wreck.  Though it only lasted 20 or 30 seconds, I now consider that event to be among the most important bits of driver education that I have had.   

 

In turn, here is my point of view on how driver education can be made even more valuable and, by extension, how such programs can do even more to reduce the number and frequency of automotive deaths: the curriculum and materials should devote more time and (importantly) intensity to helping students understand the very real, very human consequences of distracted or irresponsible driving.  Would it be pleasant?  No.  But if such a message could hit every aspiring driver right between the eyes – the way it hit me – I am quite sure that it would stick.   Most importantly, if it helped prod more teenagers to be mindful while driving, so they don’t end up under a tarp on the Cross County it would be worth any and all discomfort they might have experienced while learning to become drivers.

 

I am a responsible person by nature, so I always do my best to stay focused on the road while driving, doing my best to anticipate everything happening around me.  Not all my peers share this sensibility.  At least not yet.  So, I do my part by sharing the account of the accident I saw.  I take care not to preach, but I spare no details.  I remind them that there are some intense physics at work when a 1.5-ton vehicle collides with something while speeding.  I assure them that without seatbelts, people of all ages and sizes can and do become airborne.  

 

More broadly I theorize that after many years’ drivers’ can develop poor or dangerous habits, and/or their faculties can deteriorate.  Perhaps Federal and State regulators should consider some kind of recertification program that would enable longtime drivers to stay on the road… while also removing those who no longer should be.