The night I was fortunate enough to walk away

In April 2010, my friend, Megan, graduated from the University of Utah. On the evening of her convocation, I drove up to Salt Lake City with another friend, Angela, to attend Megan’s graduation ceremonies. Angela has epilepsy and cannot drive so I was driving and I was responsible for her safety. The convocation ceremony was wonderful and Megan was fabulous. It was a great night for the three of us.

On the way home, one of my tires blew on the freeway. Most of the vehicles behind me swerved around us. However, one car, the one with a drunk man at the wheel, did not swerve fast enough. He hit us at 70 miles per hour and the cars were both totaled. I was completely winded but otherwise unharmed. As soon as I got my breath back, I was fine. Angela is only half my size so the accident shook her more violently. It messed up her back and she needed several chiropractic visits to get her spine back to normal. Eventually she was okay as well. I am so glad she was all right. I was driving. She was my passenger. I was supposed to take care of her. I would feel terrible if she were still experiencing effects from that accident today.

We were incredibly fortunate that neither one of us suffered permanent damage. Neither of us died. Not everyone is so lucky. Some people are critically injured. Some people are disfigured for life. Some people do die. I feel awful for everyone who is not able to walk away as I did.

We have to do a better job of teaching people not to drink and drive. It would be impossible to say it too often. We have to keep repeating it until everyone believes it. Drivers ed for teenagers is a good start. Refresher classes for irresponsible drivers with lots of points on their licenses is a great addition. However, we should do more. We should have refresher classes for all the drivers. Because everybody should be reminded regularly that drinking and driving and deadly together.

We need to take action too. We have passed laws requiring seat belts and car seats. Now we need laws requiring every vehicle to have a breathalyzer installed so that only sober people will be able to drive. Driving is a privilege and intoxicated people need to wait until they are sober again to have the privilege of driving given back to them.

I used to speed a lot before that night in 2010. I got many speeding tickets in my first three years of driving. Then I was hit on the freeway and I stopped speeding all the time. I realized that accidents are real. I realized that speed is dangerous. I have started following the speed limit because I do not ever want a passenger in my car to be injured ever again.