Miller,
Alex 11/20/2019
Driver
Education Initiative Essay Contest

In
the summer between my Sophomore and Junior year of highschool, I took
a drivers education course through my highschool on the weekdays.
Throughout the course, I learned how to safely, and properly drive
and maintain a vehicle. Over the course of the summer, the main focus
on every topic we discussed was safety. When I first started driving
as a young adult, I ignored the fundamental rules of driving, like
most kids, and made mistakes that cost too many lives across the
United States yearly. I texted while driving, I drove faster than the
posted limit, and I focused on music and the radio instead of the
road. Unfortunately, these common mistakes caused me to have an
accident and I risked not only my life, but my friends life in the
process. As most kids our age, (Young Adults), we think nothing of
texting and driving; or focusing on the radio while we are cruising
along the road. One day after a football game, I picked up my friend
and we were headed to meet with our other friends to hangout. He was
changing the music through his phone and asked to turn up the bass.
Rather than telling him how to do it so I could focus on the road, I
began to mess with the radio as we began to arrive to a sharp bend.
Luckily, my friend looked up and noticed the situation we were in.
Panicking, as we were seconds away from going head first into the
ditch, I shanked the wheel and we began to spin out. I tried to turn
into it but as I had a lapse in judgement for the moment, I did not
shift it into neutral. Instead I pressed on the break, making a large
mistake. I was driving my Jeep Liberty, and given its short wheel
base, we began to flip as the car went momentarily airborne. We then
smashed into a tree and were sent in a 180 facing back into the
ditch. The rear axle was in the backseat of my car and the vehicle
was totaled. My friend and I managed to get away with only minor
injuries, and light concussions. Everyone we knew, including him and
I, always said it will be someone else who gets into an accident.
What we were not able to realize until it happened to us was that to
everyone else, we are that someone else that it happens to. Since
that event, him and I along with our friends who weren’t there,
realized that we only have one life and that we need to wait for the
texts we get; or the song that comes on that we want to change can
wait until it is safe for us to act upon. Because not only does it
endanger the lives of us, it can risk the lives of others as well who
are following the rules of the road.