Driving with Fear

A young girl perhaps between the ages five or six sits perched in the front passenger seat of the car. Engrossed in the excitement of her day at school and chats away endlessly to her Father who just picked her up. Her intelligent and observant eyes glancing over the landscape as she imagines her favorite television characters running alongside the car, and seeing if the white lines on the road ever had an end or continue along to the ends of the earth. Earlier that day she may have worked on some pottery, learned addition, and spelled out words. As it was a Friday, her heart pounded with excitement as it would be the night of her first ever sleepover with the girls in her class. Everyone around this beautiful young girl saw the light in her eyes, contagious smile, and inquisitive manner that endeared their hearts at the core. Her Father thought of this in a strong wave of love for her as he turned into an intersection, there were headlights and fear, in an instant, the goodness was gone.

Take for instance this story and imagine if the Father had thought to look and check for oncoming traffic, if the car that struck them hadn’t tried to run the light at the last second. Maybe the cold hands of death would have waited for their target’s natural time to go. However, the world doesn’t work like this. The best thing we can do is to take their stories and empathise to make a better future for humanity, so that maybe one day, other children are able to grow up with their positive minds and aspirations to really make an impact for the good. This is the true importance of a drivers education, it enables citizens to prevent happenings of this sort and allows for healthy forward thinking and planning to avoid. By doing so, we would be setting an good example for our youth and in time and implementation, slowly avoid such happenings in any format.

During my freshman year of high school, the entire school was hit by tragedy, when a young boy named Miles was speeding on his way to basketball practice and a deer had run out into the road. He swerved and hit a tree. A few hours later the fatality accident was announced and the school called an assembly, the impact this had on the students I will never forget. This boy I had never met turned out to have grazed death before as a child and was saved by a seemingly miraculous blood donor who remained anonymous. So he decided to treat everyone he met like it was the person who saved his life hopefully to repay the act of kindness. The impact this decision left on people was beyond anything I could have imagined, because he was the best of the school. Model boy, very sweet, kind, inspirational, and had the light in his eyes. It doesn’t matter who you are or the impact you make, because poor decisions while driving will claim anyone’s life.

Moving forward, we can perhaps take steps to improve driving by publishing and sharing their stories. Bringing awareness to the true dangers of habits we all have every day, and really drive hope the impact this can have on anyone’s life. To be afraid of the risks of ignoring the issue is to risk the life of another, and therefore by pushing this fear, hopefully the message will reach far and wide. Tell the stories of the good people, people who had everything going for them, people who are like everyone in the sense of the possible fear and instinctive need of self preservation, because if citizens can understand this, they will pay more attention during their driving courses. These risks are really hammered home when each generation is introduced into driving, it’s when they get comfortable is when there is a problem. By instilling PSA’s through social media, radio, signs, etc. we could be able to reach across different medians and make a true impact.

In conclusion, the vice of bad driving takes the lives of too many people over trivial seeming problems. If our souls were lifted from bearing the idea that we wouldnt know when we could take a life by driving perfectly and responsibly, this wouldn’t be a problem anymore, but no longer an issue. We don’t live in that world, there is always a risk and we need to know how to deal with this and set ourselves up for success in the future. The best way to do this is public information and a little bit of healthy fear of the consequences.