Impact: Car Accidents and How to Avoid Them

It’s hard to describe the feeling of getting into a car accident to someone who has never been in one. There’s a lurch as you collide with the other car, kind of like being in a bumper car, before a sickening stillness. Sometimes, there’s the smell of something burning coming from your car, if something’s been crushed. And then, the awful waiting, for the questions to end,for the tow truck to come, for the inevitable insurance calls and court dates.

At least, that’s how my personal experience with getting into an accident was. I was only 17 at the time, and had been driving with no issues for a year and some change. At the time, I was at a stop light, trying to check my GPS to avoid traffic in an area I was unfamiliar with. Just a quick look made me believe that the light had turned green, and I started to accelerate—only to rear-end the person in front of me. That person then accelerated accidentally (a fact I couldn’t prove they said in court) and ran into the car in front of them. Luckily, no one had any permanent injuries.

I don’t think I was driving particularly irresponsibly: if you’re in a part of the city you don’t know well, it’s common to use a GPS to get around. And I had never had any problems with using my GPS on the road before. But just the memory of that crash—the bone-chilling November winds that I stood in for an hour and a half, waiting for my dad to pick me up without a jacket—is enough to make me reluctant to touch my phone for any reason while in the midst of driving or at stop-lights. Nowadays, if my GPS malfunctions in the middle of my drive, I’m much more likely to look for a place to pull over and resolve the issue there before getting back on the road.

After my accident, I had to attend driving school, and was shocked by the reasons that people were in there. Extreme speeding, huge crashes…for someone who’d lightly rear-ended someone, I almost felt like I didn’t need to be alongside those people. These were people who had endangered not only others, but themselves.

First, many of them thought that wearing seatbelts was needless and annoying. Some even bragged that they’d been pulled over for different reasons and had escaped an extra citation for not wearing their seatbelt. But whether a cop punishes a driver for it or not, not wearing a seatbelt is about more than comfort, it’s about lives. The number one way that you as a driver can protect your life is to wear a seatbelt. By wearing it, and wearing it correctly—with the bottom strap at your hips and the shoulder strap across your chest and off your throat—you cut down on your risk of death tremendously.

Many of the people in that driving class also justified speeding 10, 20, even 30-plus miles above the speed limit under the umbrella of “rushing due to lateness”. The easiest solution to avoid this dangerous driving practice is to 1) leave early or 2) be late.

The best way to be a safe driver and protect others on the road is to cut down on distractions. There are three types: visual, manual, and cognitive.

Visual distractions cause a driver to take their eyes off the road. They can include things such as phones or other devices, eye-catching features like car accidents, weather, or even other passengers. The best bet to avoid visual distractions inside the car is to ensure you’re prepared to drive before you pull off: secure loose items like purses, strap in your kids, and set up your Google Maps in the driveway. If you don’t need phone navigation, find system settings or download an app that disallows phone usage during the drive. If worse comes to worse, you can always pull over and get yourself together before getting back on the road. Outside of the car, some visual distractions can be protected against (wearing sunglasses to avoid sun glare, or using windshield wipers in the rain), but it’s out of a driver’s power to take down a flashy billboard, so that requires a certain level of self-control.

Manual distractions cause a driver to take their hands off the wheel. The most common manual distraction is eating or drinking in the car, but people also rummage in their bags, mess with their phones, put on makeup and clothing, and so on and so forth. The easiest way to avoid these is just to pull over. No meal or rushed eyeliner is worth your or another person’s life, no matter how much of a rush you’re in.

Finally, cognitive distractions cause a driver to take their mind off the road. These kinds of distractions are the easiest for drivers to fall prey to and the hardest to find a solution to. A common cognitive distraction is a simple conversation, as anyone who’s missed an exit while talking with their passenger can tell you. Other common cognitive distractions include fatigue, stress, and even strong emotion. Road rage is a common example of this, but even being very excited or very nervous could make you less observant on the road and unable to react to problems in time.

These many sources of distraction are why driver education is so important. People just don’t know about how easy it is to get distracted. There are plenty of people who swear that they can eat and drive, or who have phone conversations on the road, and these people will swear that they’re being perfectly safe. They are, until they’re not, when they can’t react fast enough to respond to a sharp brake in front of them or a deer running across the road.

Education on these risks can help people understand the dangers of activities that seem innocuous, as well as give them resources to stay safe. How many people know about the existence of apps like Lifesaver and Cellcontrol (which bar you from phone usage) or Live2Txt (which blocked incoming texts and calls)? Letting people know these resources are out there could literally save lives.

Though my car accident was fairly mild, it’s still an experience I wouldn’t wish on anyone. That’s why it’s important that people know what to avoid and how to avoid it: so that they can make it home in time for dinner.