Horizon Cruising: Reducing Car Crash Mortality Rates

Horizon cruising: Reducing Car Crash Mortality Rates

Despite the red light, the caravan zoomed onward, the sun penetrating the driver’s vision as a turning vehicle smashed into the passenger side of my mother’s red Jeep. A year later, she would finally go to court for her traffic ticket, lawyer in tow, her insistence upon fault of the horizon driving her anathema to the other driver’s ambivalence. After all, so my mother would say, she was the one in the neck brace with a smashed red cherry for a ride. 

Doubtless I was horrified to discover my mother in the hospital for a car accident. She was the safe driver, the one to maneuver around defensive drivers, the one to which I watched and trusted behind the wheel. I buckled my seatbelt not because she was a threat to my being, but because it is Virginia state law. Seat belt slashed across my body, I could not expect my mother to suffer a car crash incident as I sat in the back, watching her hands turn the wheel meticulously and cautiously. These were the same hands that veered the steering wheel straight into a crash, I would later query. The same hands which fed and helped nurse me? 

In the end, I discovered it did not matter who started the car crash. That was my lesson upon witnessing the droll court procedure wherein a smug lawyer tried to muster enough evidence to prove my mother did not have to pay a miniscule fine. In the end, vehicles collide, and I am even okay with dents in cars as long as no one dies. Fortunately, in my mother’s case, no heads were rolling.

However, car crashes kill nearly 34,000 people each year. In my mother’s case, the early rising sun aided in her collision as she could not visibly see the color of the streetlight, instead continuing like a pointed arrow destined for the bull’s eye. But clearly this statistic proves the necessity of driver education. I could not just forget this car collision; after all, who wants to pay a fine? But a fine does not surmount to anything compared to an individual’s life. My mother is the safest driver I know and yet Fate still blasted her with suffering. But I choose to learn from her story and adapt my own driving abilities. 

Yet, no matter how much skill I have (or think I have) behind the wheel, Nature too deals its own cards, such as the incident with the horizon. There will be no eradication of car crashes; there are too many variables which coincide with collisions. However, one may adapt and learn cautious behavior to control man-made forces. 

For example, when I am not driving, I pay attention to the driver’s own abilities behind the wheel. I watch their feet on the pedals, their hands, the way they move their eyes and head to check mirrors, their distraction points. Thus, attention outside of myself when in the passenger seat provides a third-person experience, aiding in my driving education. Moreover, I also witness peoples’ ability to grasp when they are capable of driving the motor. Doubtless it is important to remain active behind the wheel, no drooping eyes or bored expression. Energy and vitality behind the wheel! The simplest way to rally such a spirit is through acknowledging a purpose for driving. For example, whenever I am on a long-hour drive back home, I find myself alert and exhilarated; my mission: To safely get my family home and therefore I take the most precaution. Your mission? Attend the surroundings. 

In the end, attention whether in a first-person or third-person setting is the best experience to control how I drive. Though drivers cannot control Nature or wrestle Fate, when they adopt lessons and gather purpose, their drive will propel them safely onward, the horizon not blinding them but rather guiding their caravan to the final destination.