A Single Moment

The cafeteria chatter echoes through the halls. Hundreds of high school students laugh and enjoy their daily mid-day conversation before they head off back to class. In the midst of the high school chaos, the creak of a single door silenced the entire room. Two officers approach a girl and ask her to please stand up and put her hands behind her back. I had just spoken to her in the hallway yesterday. At eighteen years old, she was charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon for striking a woman with her car when going thirty miles over the speed limit. One split decision can change the course of your life forever. This girl had a promising future but in a split second, she forfeited her chances of getting into a good college and significantly changed the life of the woman she struck with her car. Teenagers who've only been driving for a few years feel like they are the kings and queens of the road, but frankly this just is not the case. It was a late Friday night and this girl was just returning home from hanging out with a group of friends. She claimed that she was spun out of control, but the traffic cameras came to a different conclusion. In a neighborhood where the speed limit was 40 MPH, she was going over 70. She didn’t see the jogger crossing the road and she struck her, giving her life altering brain injuries. That decision she made to drive recklessly had severe consequences, and she has to live with that for the rest of her life.  Although the victim of this horrific accident survived, her life is forever changed because of a decision this eighteen year old girl decided to make. We all must learn from her mistakes. I have heard way too many stories of students boasting about reckless driving. During drivers ed, instructors must emphasize to teenagers that having a driver's license is not a right but a privilege. We need to take driving more seriously. No matter how easy driving becomes, following the rules of the road should still remain a conscious task. As a society, we are always going to be more concerned about our own wellbeing before others, but this needs to change. The next time you contemplate going through with that illegal turn or going over the speed limit, think about this girl whose life changed within a matter of seconds because of her ignorant decision to drive recklessly.