Be the Annoying Friend

Be the Annoying Friend

I used to always get made fun of. I was 16 without a license, or even a permit. Then I was 17 with still no progress. In reality, I was terrified of getting behind the wheel. I had seen accidents, been in accidents, and was scared of becoming one. By now, I am 18 and have finally gotten my license, but I think what I learned in my Drivers’ Education class has allowed me to be a safe and careful driver. One of our last classes of the semester was about drunk driving. We were shown graphic images of crashes caused by drivers who were under the influence. In one of them, only the scalp of a girl was able to be seen and I noticed that we had the exact same hair. I saw my own bloody hair coming out of the drivers side window. I turned, visibly upset, to the boys I was sitting next to. They looked at me, looked at the image, and then looked back, now also upset.

Learning the rules of the road and then seeing what can happen when you do not follow them has a great impact. It’s scary, but ultimately in a good way. You would not want to be driving around people who did not mind if they got into a crash or not. Like everything else with driving, I knew absolutely nothing about cars or road laws going into the class. In fact, I had to ask the boys around me what four-wheel drive meant. While not having this knowledge furthered my driving anxiety at the time, I found that getting behind the wheel was the best way to learn. To prevent deadly crashes, the most basic thing you can do is follow the rules of the road. Stop at all of the stop signs and look both ways before continuing on. Beyond that, you always have to pay attention to the drivers around you and be prepared for something unexpected. You always have to be ready to react if they swerve into your lane or try to go through the intersection while you’re still in the middle waiting to turn left (which happened to me on my second day of driving alone).

Despite the close call, I’ve only ever been in one accident, and it was in my school bus. In seventh grade, we were on our way to school on an icy day that definitely should have been a two-hour delay when a car lost control on top of a hilly turn. They came down the hill with no chance of stopping and hit the bus into the guardrail. My forehead went straight into the seat in front of me. I could register people yelling and my brother coming up to the front of the bus to check on me. Though we basically never got along, he lifted me over the guardrail to get me off of the road. Though all of us students were okay other than bumps, bruises, concussions, and one broken finger, the other car did not fare too well. We could hear the couple in the car screaming, and it got worse when they were moved into the ambulance, which seemed to take an eternity to arrive. Though I was fine and joking about how this would cause the district to call more snow days, the experience has stayed with me. There was a massive dent in the guardrail for years. Now it has been replaced, but I still know where it is. I go slow down that hill.

Though my anxiety has calmed now that I have been driving for several months, everytime I pass an accident on my way to work, I get thrown back. I realize how dangerous what I am doing is. I glance over to see if I can spot anything going on and then I immediately make sure my hands are at 10 and 2. The combination of experiencing an accident and seeing the drunk driving slideshow has caused me to become a volunteer police officer when others are driving me around. I tell my parents to put their phones down, stop eating, or slow down. They hate this, but I would hate having to attend a closed casket funeral more, so I don’t let up.

I would encourage everyone to be the annoying friend when in the car. Remind them of the speed limit, watch out for other cars on the road, and take their phone from them if they can’t seem to keep themselves off of it. Be sure to do this for yourself too; I already know what my car crash would look like and I’m not going to let it become a reality.