Safe driving is a contract we all agree to when we get a driver’s license. It is reliant on all drivers following the rules of the road. Statistically, driving is more dangerous than other modes of travel like flying in a plane or riding on a train, yet it seems our society takes its safety for granted.
According to the NTSB, there were 0.95 fatal car accidents per 100,000 flight hours in 2021. That's about 14 times the driving fatality rate and half the motorcycle rate.
I believe driving is a privilege, and I do not take any aspect of it for granted. In fact, I do not take any normal day-to-day activities for granted. In September 2022 I had an arteriovenous malformation (AVM) burst near my cerebellum, and I almost lost my life. After being in a total of three hospitals for almost three months, I was discharged from an inpatient neuro rehabilitation hospital, and I left in a wheelchair having lost the full function of the right side of my body. Over the past two years I have had to relearn everything from speaking, swallowing, walking, and of course driving.
Before my injury, at 15 years old, I had my driver’s permit, and I was learning to drive with my parents. I had a healthy respect for the rules of the road, and I was terrified of driving at high speed, but I did not think of it as a special privilege. Obviously, my life completely changed after my injury and driving was not high on my list of priorities anymore. My perspective and thoughts about driving quickly changed after learning to transfer from a wheelchair to the car, and also being issued a handicap parking tag from the Department of Motor Vehicles. I went through months of physical and occupational therapy. My physical therapy was focused on relearning to walk, working on my reflexes, and rebuilding lost muscle. My occupational therapy focused on smaller tasks like writing and addressing my vision issues. My therapists knew I had my driver’s permit and they wanted to get me back out on the road, but safely. Unfortunately, my traumatic brain injury left me with double vision and a reduction in my reflexes and reaction time. Many of my daily exercises were focused on addressing those, so I could safely drive again. In fact, the vision tests I took were similar to those taken by elderly driver’s with poor vision. Eventually, I passed their tests, and the therapists shared that I was ready to start driving again. Unfortunately, I had to start all the way over and relearn how to drive with my changed body. It took almost a year of practice, but I did pass the test, and I am now a driver on the road. I am now more acutely aware of driver safety, and that I have to rely on others to drive safely around me, because I am now a more vulnerable driver. I, like elderly drivers or drivers with disabilities, am driving with some disadvantages. I benefit from the social contract of everyone else driving safely around me each time I drive.
There is a 35% chance of getting into a car accident when driving at high speed, over 55 miles an hour. On October 07, 2024, my high school art teacher was driving to school, and she died in a car accident. She was driving on an expressway at high speed, and was hit head on. Two other people died in the accident. The art teacher was a light of acceptance at our school, and she was a personal mentor for me. Her classroom was one of the first rooms I entered after re-entering high school after missing Fall term 2022 and half of Winter term 2022. She helped lead me back to doing an activity I enjoyed prior to my traumatic brain injury, and she was accepting of my new limitations. I was even a Ceramics teaching assistant for her. She was known to be a warm and kind teacher, and she was a welcoming teacher to any artistic misfit in the high school. Her senseless death is such a great loss to our high school community. 36,164 car accidents happen each day with most being fatal. If everyone driving a car made good on the social contract of driving safely, how many deaths could be prevented? It’s difficult to estimate, because even if everyone involved does follow all the rules of the road, accidents can still happen because the activity of driving is an innately dangerous activity. Car accidents are too common, and often preventable, unlike my rare AVM, and still even more rare for the AVM to burst and bleed. If I could have followed some kind of rule to prevent my brain injury, I certainly would have. So now as a daily driver, I am intensely focused on following the rules of the road for safe driving, because I value my life, and the privilege of driving.