Happy Birthday

Happy Birthday

The little boy was not yet halfway through grade school, but nevertheless he considered himself quite the big kid; his heart swelled at the delightful feeling of being a year older than he was yesterday.

His mom most likely took the obligatory photo over useless protests (“Aw, Mommy, really?”) and pinched his cheeks, cooing over how big he was getting. Perhaps his younger sister waited impatiently to feast on cake and ice cream. No doubt there would be presents and visits from friends. There was assuredly, however, going to be special dinner later in the evening. It was for this reason that he, his mother, father, and sister loaded into the minivan and puttered down the road that night, full of giddy happiness.

My dad was working the night shift when the paramedics rushed the little boy and his sister into the pediatric ER after a teen driver, whose speeds clocked in at 80mph, collided into their car. His mom never made it out of the ICU, and my dad helplessly watched his sister die from Level 1 trauma injuries that neither him nor the rest of the medical team could heal.

The little boy, covered in blood and sustaining severe injuries, survived. He and his father were discharged together a number of days later.

Happy birthday.

This night haunted my dad for years. Close as he and I are, it wasn’t until recently that he shared the story that plagued his sleep with nightmares. Privacy laws forbid my dad of revealing the boy’s exact age, but I estimate that around this this past May or so, he should have been flying home from college to watch his sister march across the stage and claim her high school diploma. Their mom should have been dabbing tears from her eyes next to their dad in the audience. A million things should have happened.

After hearing this tragic story, it really hit me that there are people inside the hulking pieces of metal that zip along the roads—siblings, soul mates, best friends, grandparents, and lovers. At the very least, every human inside a car is someone’s daughter or son. We know this in our heads, but do we really know this in our hearts? Though we might not be able to see their faces through the tinted windows, they are there. They are absolutely there.

And sometimes it doesn’t hit us until we hit them—literally—and see that someone’s child, whether they are grown up or haven’t yet circled the sun 18 times, lying in a pool of blood.

This, I believe, is one of the weaknesses of Drivers Ed programs, at least in the United States. We spend a lot of time talking about being “good drivers that don’t drive drunk”, which is wonderful, but we often neglect to talk about why this is important, letting random highway billboards or cheesy public service announcements take care of it. However, being a good, sober driver for the sake of being a good, sober driver isn’t enough.

On the contrary, we need to learn to be responsible drivers for the sake of everyone’s children on the road next to us. For the mom carting the soccer team in the minivan on the right. For the elderly grandma trying to merge in front of us. For the caravan of college students lined up behind us, on their way commencement. For a certain young man who harbors enough memories of his mom and sister to be devastated by their deaths, but also lost them so early that he lives most of life in the void they left behind. We aim to be good drivers, not only because we want to pass a test or avoid tickets, but for the sake of the human beings encased in the vehicles with whom we share the road. I encourage everyone who sits behind the wheel to actively wonder about the passengers of other cars. View each car as the transporter of your own family or closest companions. Though they might not truly be yours, they are someone else’s.

This awareness is too heavy to be left to random highway billboards or cheesy public service announcements. We need this engrained in our Driver’s Ed programs so that it may eventually become engrained in our lifestyles. The actual implementation of this might vary according to budget, demographic, and teacher. However, I personally believe it would be effective if, in Drivers Ed, people personally familiar with the students gave testimonies about their experience with accidents. Perhaps the floor could be opened to students as well. Not only would this drive home an accident’s devastation to humans involved, but it would also prevent the mindset of “it happens to others, but not to myself and those I know” from dulling the message. No matter the format of raising awareness, the underlying message needs to be the same: we drive safe for our fellow human beings.

Maybe if we adjusted our perspectives of responsible driving, we would prevent other horrific “happy birthdays”.