Importance of Making Good Decisions

Importance of Making Good Decisions Behind the Wheel

In 3rd grade, I was driving home from basketball practice with my dad. Suddenly, my dad and I were t-boned by a teenage driver high on marijuana. I was unconscious due to the force of the crash and after many x-rays and cat scans, they realized that I had a diffuse axonal brain injury, broken bones in my cheek, bruising on my spleen and pancreas, and torn ligaments in my neck. There were pieces of glass from the windows stuck in many parts of my body. I was sent to ICU and stayed there for three days. Doctors told my parents that I may need to be in rehab for months. I gained consciousness after 3 days and was moved to a hospital room. Doctors checked on me regularly. After 6 days of hospitalization, a surprised neurosurgeon came to talk to us. I had made a miraculous recovery, so much so that I was released to go home! She’d never seen such significant improvement in that short of time.

This accident carved a spot in my heart. I am thankful the Lord was looking over me that night. It has shaped me as a person and my perspective on life. Experiencing the fragility of life and a teenager’s poor decision, I’d never want to do that to someone else. In today’s day and age, drinking, texting, even drugs are a very common part of what we see around us every single day. Many teenagers believe that they will never cause an accident like this, and more times than not they will get lucky, but it only takes one moment for them to slip up and cause a traumatic event for themself or someone else’s family. There are so many distractions for teenage drivers, and sadly there is no guarantee that you will not cause a terrible accident. It is easy to look down or grab your phone for a few seconds, take a drink and think you are fine to drive, but that is the catch, when driving a vehicle, a few seconds is all it can take to crash and really affect someone else’s life. Vehicles are very dangerous and can lead to fatal accidents, and if not being fully responsible when behind the wheel, you are risking the life of yourself and many others.

When going through driving school and driver’s education, one of the most important topics I either heard or read about was the importance of not being distracted when driving. When teens just start driving, they are not worried about getting distracted because they are so nervous behind the wheel at the beginning that they would not even consider doing something to take their concentration off the road. The sad reality though is that once we grow older and get more comfortable on the road, it is really easy to grab your phone for a second to send a quick text or go out with friends at night and make a poor decision and think you are fine to drive home. This is where the thinking needs to be altered. When texting and driving, no matter how good of a driver you are, all it takes is a second to look at your phone and someone is crossing the road or someone in front of you stops and you do not see them and you cause a crash. Then, it is even worse with drinking and drugs. As I have lived through and witnessed, taking part in such actions can take the life of another person or family very quickly. Alcohol and drugs alter decision making and also make individuals not think clearly and this can cause a terrible accident that’ll injure themselves and the other people involved.

For me, I learned from this event. This accident is the reason I take extra precaution when driving my car. For others, they have never had to witness an incident like this and have no way to connect and understand the pain and regret of a decision made prior to or while driving. I think that the best way to reduce dangerous driving habits is to get people like me to share their stories. Hopefully, that can give other teenagers something to relate to. Once you hear other stories similar to mine, I would hope that they would resonate with others and cause them to take extra precautions when driving a vehicle. Many teenagers do not want to hear these stories about accidents when driving, but the stories need to be told to give others something to think about before they start their car and drive.