Crash. Boom. Bang. And Why Driving Safely is a Group Project.
2026 Driver Education Round 2
Max D George
Webster, Massachusetts
Crash. Boom. Bang.
Those are not sounds I particularly recommend experiencing at 65 miles per hour.
In July, I was driving in the middle lane of the highway. I was doing what I had done countless times before: driving. Nothing dramatic. No movie soundtrack. No ominous thunder. Just me, my car, and a highway full of people who presumably had somewhere to be.
Then someone stopped paying attention.
They drifted into another lane, which caused another car to react, which caused another car to react, and suddenly four cars were involved in a crash. Somehow, I went from cruising along in the middle lane to being in an emergency situation. My drivers education kicked in and I remembered not to just stand on the brake or swerve like crazy. Next thing I knew I was stopped in the fast lane with a headache and absolutely no idea what had just happened.
I leaned out of my door and threw up.
Not exactly the scenic highway experience I had been hoping for.
An ambulance took me from the scene. I had a concussion and whiplash, and months later, my lower back still reminds me that it was not consulted before any of this happened. I was 17 years old. Everyone else involved in the accident was an adult.
I am incredibly grateful that I was not hurt worse.
That thought has stuck with me.
We talk about driving so often that it can become background noise. Buckle your seatbelt. Put your phone away. Check your mirrors. Don't speed. Don't drive drunk. Pay attention. Most of us have heard these things so many times that they can start sounding like the verbal equivalent of someone reminding you to brush your teeth.
But a highway has a funny way of making those little rules feel considerably less optional.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 44,000 people died in motor vehicle crashes in the United States in 2023. That is more than 120 people every day. The CDC also reports that more than 2.8 million people visited emergency departments because of motor vehicle crash injuries that year.
Those numbers are enormous, but numbers can be strangely easy to ignore. I can read “44,000 people” and understand intellectually that it is a terrible number. But I have a much harder time imagining 44,000 individual people. Forty-four thousand families. Forty-four thousand empty seats at dinner tables. Forty-four thousand people who thought they were probably just going somewhere.
After my accident, statistics feel different.
I know what it is like to be sitting in a car one second and to have absolutely no control over what happens the next. I know what it feels like to be confused, hurt, and surrounded by strangers who are suddenly very concerned about whether you are okay. I know what it is like to realize that something that seemed completely routine could have ended very differently.
And the frustrating part is that my accident did not require some spectacular act of recklessness. Nobody needed to be racing down the highway at 120 miles per hour. Nobody needed to intentionally do something dangerous.
Someone just wasn't paying attention.
That is what scares me most about distracted driving. It does not always look dangerous while you are doing it.
Looking at your phone for a few seconds does not feel like enough time to change someone's life. Glancing at a notification does not feel like a decision with potentially permanent consequences. Thinking, “I'll just answer this really quickly,” seems harmless.
But cars do not care how quick your text is.
At 65 miles per hour, everything happens very quickly. A few seconds is not really a few seconds. It is hundreds of feet of road. It is enough time for another driver to change lanes. Enough time for traffic to stop. Enough time for a normal afternoon to become an ambulance ride.
Being an educated driver means understanding that driving is not just about knowing how to operate a vehicle. It is about understanding responsibility.
This is also why I think driver's education and traffic safety courses matter. Learning how to parallel park is useful, but learning why distracted or impaired driving is dangerous is arguably more important. A good driver's education course should not just teach someone how to pass a road test. It should teach them how quickly a bad decision can become a life-changing one. Education about impaired driving, distracted driving, defensive driving, and recognizing dangerous situations can give new drivers the knowledge to make better decisions before they are sitting behind the wheel with a real opportunity to hurt someone.
No driver's education course can make accidents disappear. People will still make mistakes. Cars will still break down. Other drivers will still do unpredictable things. But education can make safer choices more automatic, and those choices can protect lives.
You are responsible for the people sitting in your car, but also for the people in the cars around you. The person in the next lane might be somebody's little brother. The driver behind you might be someone's mom. The pedestrian waiting at the crosswalk might have absolutely nothing to do with your decisions, but their safety can still depend on them.
That makes driving feel a lot less like an individual activity.
It is more like a group project, except the group project is moving at highway speeds and nobody can simply email the teacher when something goes wrong.
Being a safe driver means paying attention even when you are bored. It means wearing a seatbelt even when you are only going five minutes down the road. It means not driving impaired, not driving aggressively, and not assuming that because you are a good driver, everyone else is too.
It also means being willing to admit that you are not invincible.
I certainly did not feel invincible before my accident. I knew crashes happened. I knew distracted driving was dangerous. I knew I should pay attention. I thought I understood all of that, but drivers educations also teaches you what to do when chaos ensues anways. I'm so fortunate I took driver's education classes seriously and knew how to safely stop my car with out making the accident worse.
But knowing something and feeling it are different.
Now, when I get behind the wheel, I think about how quickly everything can change. I think about the four cars on that highway. I think about the ambulance. I think about waking up with a headache and wondering how I had gotten there.
Mostly, I think about how lucky I was.
I was 17. I walked away.
Someone else might not.
The CDC says that motor vehicle crash injuries and deaths are preventable and that there are proven strategies that can reduce them. That is the part I want people to remember. These numbers are not inevitable. We are not powerless against them.
We just have to take driving seriously.
Put the phone down. Pay attention. Wear the seatbelt. Slow down when you need to. Don't drive impaired. Take driver's education seriously. Learn the rules, but more importantly, understand why they exist.
No matter how old you are its never too late to take a drivers education course. Because you dont know what you don't know, and hurtling through the world at 65 mph is not the best time to figure that out.
I learned that on a highway in July.
Crash. Boom. Bang.
I would really prefer not to hear those sounds again.
Works Cited
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “About Transportation Safety.” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Those are not sounds I particularly recommend experiencing at 65 miles per hour.
In July, I was driving in the middle lane of the highway. I was doing what I had done countless times before: driving. Nothing dramatic. No movie soundtrack. No ominous thunder. Just me, my car, and a highway full of people who presumably had somewhere to be.
Then someone stopped paying attention.
They drifted into another lane, which caused another car to react, which caused another car to react, and suddenly four cars were involved in a crash. Somehow, I went from cruising along in the middle lane to being in an emergency situation. My drivers education kicked in and I remembered not to just stand on the brake or swerve like crazy. Next thing I knew I was stopped in the fast lane with a headache and absolutely no idea what had just happened.
I leaned out of my door and threw up.
Not exactly the scenic highway experience I had been hoping for.
An ambulance took me from the scene. I had a concussion and whiplash, and months later, my lower back still reminds me that it was not consulted before any of this happened. I was 17 years old. Everyone else involved in the accident was an adult.
I am incredibly grateful that I was not hurt worse.
That thought has stuck with me.
We talk about driving so often that it can become background noise. Buckle your seatbelt. Put your phone away. Check your mirrors. Don't speed. Don't drive drunk. Pay attention. Most of us have heard these things so many times that they can start sounding like the verbal equivalent of someone reminding you to brush your teeth.
But a highway has a funny way of making those little rules feel considerably less optional.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 44,000 people died in motor vehicle crashes in the United States in 2023. That is more than 120 people every day. The CDC also reports that more than 2.8 million people visited emergency departments because of motor vehicle crash injuries that year.
Those numbers are enormous, but numbers can be strangely easy to ignore. I can read “44,000 people” and understand intellectually that it is a terrible number. But I have a much harder time imagining 44,000 individual people. Forty-four thousand families. Forty-four thousand empty seats at dinner tables. Forty-four thousand people who thought they were probably just going somewhere.
After my accident, statistics feel different.
I know what it is like to be sitting in a car one second and to have absolutely no control over what happens the next. I know what it feels like to be confused, hurt, and surrounded by strangers who are suddenly very concerned about whether you are okay. I know what it is like to realize that something that seemed completely routine could have ended very differently.
And the frustrating part is that my accident did not require some spectacular act of recklessness. Nobody needed to be racing down the highway at 120 miles per hour. Nobody needed to intentionally do something dangerous.
Someone just wasn't paying attention.
That is what scares me most about distracted driving. It does not always look dangerous while you are doing it.
Looking at your phone for a few seconds does not feel like enough time to change someone's life. Glancing at a notification does not feel like a decision with potentially permanent consequences. Thinking, “I'll just answer this really quickly,” seems harmless.
But cars do not care how quick your text is.
At 65 miles per hour, everything happens very quickly. A few seconds is not really a few seconds. It is hundreds of feet of road. It is enough time for another driver to change lanes. Enough time for traffic to stop. Enough time for a normal afternoon to become an ambulance ride.
Being an educated driver means understanding that driving is not just about knowing how to operate a vehicle. It is about understanding responsibility.
This is also why I think driver's education and traffic safety courses matter. Learning how to parallel park is useful, but learning why distracted or impaired driving is dangerous is arguably more important. A good driver's education course should not just teach someone how to pass a road test. It should teach them how quickly a bad decision can become a life-changing one. Education about impaired driving, distracted driving, defensive driving, and recognizing dangerous situations can give new drivers the knowledge to make better decisions before they are sitting behind the wheel with a real opportunity to hurt someone.
No driver's education course can make accidents disappear. People will still make mistakes. Cars will still break down. Other drivers will still do unpredictable things. But education can make safer choices more automatic, and those choices can protect lives.
You are responsible for the people sitting in your car, but also for the people in the cars around you. The person in the next lane might be somebody's little brother. The driver behind you might be someone's mom. The pedestrian waiting at the crosswalk might have absolutely nothing to do with your decisions, but their safety can still depend on them.
That makes driving feel a lot less like an individual activity.
It is more like a group project, except the group project is moving at highway speeds and nobody can simply email the teacher when something goes wrong.
Being a safe driver means paying attention even when you are bored. It means wearing a seatbelt even when you are only going five minutes down the road. It means not driving impaired, not driving aggressively, and not assuming that because you are a good driver, everyone else is too.
It also means being willing to admit that you are not invincible.
I certainly did not feel invincible before my accident. I knew crashes happened. I knew distracted driving was dangerous. I knew I should pay attention. I thought I understood all of that, but drivers educations also teaches you what to do when chaos ensues anways. I'm so fortunate I took driver's education classes seriously and knew how to safely stop my car with out making the accident worse.
But knowing something and feeling it are different.
Now, when I get behind the wheel, I think about how quickly everything can change. I think about the four cars on that highway. I think about the ambulance. I think about waking up with a headache and wondering how I had gotten there.
Mostly, I think about how lucky I was.
I was 17. I walked away.
Someone else might not.
The CDC says that motor vehicle crash injuries and deaths are preventable and that there are proven strategies that can reduce them. That is the part I want people to remember. These numbers are not inevitable. We are not powerless against them.
We just have to take driving seriously.
Put the phone down. Pay attention. Wear the seatbelt. Slow down when you need to. Don't drive impaired. Take driver's education seriously. Learn the rules, but more importantly, understand why they exist.
No matter how old you are its never too late to take a drivers education course. Because you dont know what you don't know, and hurtling through the world at 65 mph is not the best time to figure that out.
I learned that on a highway in July.
Crash. Boom. Bang.
I would really prefer not to hear those sounds again.
Works Cited
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “About Transportation Safety.” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
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