Red Means Stop

A flash of forest green and the smell of burning rubber. Panic all around me as my mom drives by. The red and orange flickers enrapture my attention as the lady holding a baby is wailing towards the flames. Her breath fogs from the chill in the air but her tears stay warm against her cheeks. That was the first time I saw someone die. I never saw the body of the person in the flipped, aflamed, dark green Jeep, but something inside me knew.

Ever since my youthful gaze saw that scene, I’ve never looked at driving the same. I wasn’t in the accident, but those few seconds I drove by told the story I would’ve never been able to understand if I hadn’t had seen it. Death has been in my life since I was even younger than this event, but I never saw death before. An eleven year old seeing the pain of someone who just caused the death of someone they care about. I was petrified. Someone was living, breathing, laughing one moment, and the next, lifeless, cold. Cold like the chill in the air fogging the crying lady’s breath.

You can never truly grasp death until you see it, and vehicle accidents are some of the most violent and shocking ones to witness. Five car pile ups and tipping semis and drifting near a cliff on a snowy day are preventable. No eleven year old should ever have to see a corpse being burned.

I fear for my little sister to get her license because other drivers are stupid. 20 somethings and older think using a bike lane to skip traffic and turn right is ok. I don’t want her to be in a situation where she has to rely on someone else’s ability to use their brake. I want her to be in a world where drivers look for pedestrians or look for cars coming the other way.

Although teens are notorious for their bad driving, adults are the ones who need to be more educated. Laws and habits change. A short habit that you do everyday could kill someone. For example, I was hit while riding my bike to school from a 20 something year old who was too lazy to check the crosswalk. I was fine, thankfully, but had his reaction time to his brake been slower, I would’ve broken my leg. My life has been endangered every time I pick up my keys to get Taco Bell, but I am in control of my 1.5 ton missile. When I’m out on my bike, I have to rely on other people to wait to turn left while I cross the street or even look for me crossing the street.

Educating people on why these things are dangerous saves lives. No one can prove otherwise. Don’t cross the double yellow, don’t cross the solid white, green means go, yellow means slow, and red means stop. Nowadays with more reckless drivers on the road, it’s more like cross the double yellow to turn left, merge over the solid line because no one has time to wait, green means go, yellow means go faster, and red means slow for a second and go. Everyone is in a rush and rarely do people take the extra steps to ensure their and everyone around them’s safety. Teaching people those extra steps and explaining why they are necessary could save so many lives. Just waiting to turn left could save so many lives. Going 5 over the speed limit instead of 10 on the highway could save so many lives. Slowing down improves reaction time and could prevent major accidents because a collision at 45 mph is far different than 65 mph.

Going back to the basics is how people remember the minute details. To separate the meanings, the signs and signals are organized in color and shape. Red means stop: stop signs are red and mean stop. Blinking red traffic lights means stop. The rules and laws of the road aren’t complicated but there are a lot of them. Yellow means slow: yellow means slow at a traffic light, triangle yellow signs mean slow and caution, yellow speed signs mean slow below the actual speed limit. Orange means caution: construction tape is orange, orange cones to direct traffic, and orange vests on road workers. And green means go. That’s the only one people truly pay attention to. Over 2,000 road workers died on the job from a passing car not paying enough attention to the orange. Over 6,000 pedestrians died just from walking because a passing car was not paying enough attention to the red.

People need to know to pay attention. People need to just pay attention. It saves lives. They need to know red means stop.