One of 1.6 Billion

I have often been asked whether or not I enjoy driving, usually by children. I could tell them the risks and the horrors that are attached to the steering wheel in front of me. My answer could be a lesson about how many people who drive are reckless and do not care about other’s safety. These children ask out of curiosity and amazement. They only know that they get into a car almost everyday. Most people do. Because despite the risks, there are too many benefits to count, and because the world has become desensitized to the true responsibility of driving. 

In 1885 the first test drive of Karl Benz’s gasoline-powered Patent-Motorwagen occurred. The following year he was awarded a patent for his invention of the car. Very quickly this invention was adapted into luxury novelties throughout Europe and soon imported to America. Henry Ford then propelled the production of his Ford Model T. By 1929 cars became accessible to the middle class. During rebuilding after World War II, automobile factories were included in the construction, globalizing this revolutionary invention. Ever since, cars have been an indispensable part of everyday life, for better or worse. 

Today there are approximately 1.699 billion motor vehicles in the world. One of them belongs to me. One of them nearly changed my family’s future. In 2023 there were 284 million cars and 40,000 deaths caused by traffic accidents in the United States. One hundred years earlier there were 1.3 million cars and 4,200 deaths. Never in history has there been a time when the number of cars was not linked to the number of deaths.

In 2020 my father, sister, and brother were going on a run early in the morning. A car came down the road behind them. My siblings stepped off the road. My dad was about to step off when the car drove past, hitting his shoulder and throwing him into the ditch. It was ten minutes before he gained consciousness. It was thirty minutes before I answered the door and found a police officer with my siblings. It was an hour later when I heard that my dad had only a broken arm, concussion, and a few scrapes. It has been six years and I still feel the pit in my stomach when I think of what might have happened had the car hit one of my siblings. I still get choked up when I realize that, had things not turned out alright, my baby sister—who was three months old at the time—would never remember her father. It does not take looking back at the pictures of my father’s bloody face to remember how close the death count that year could have gone up by one. I was not involved in that incident. Even so, every time I get in my car I think of how many lives I am responsible for, whether or not I have passengers.

Driving should be cautioned. The risks should be understood and not simply noted. The number of crashes in a year feels like a statistic. The Boston Massacre was when British soldiers shot into an unarmed angry crowd out of fear and rage. It was a terrible act and people squirm thinking of the cruelty it takes to kill defenseless people. History teaches us to remember five deaths because they changed a nation. Yet tens of thousands of deaths on our roads become another statistic.

Everyone knows the risks of driving. Everyone can repeat the lecture they got about sitting behind the wheel. The list of what to and not to do is obvious. Even so, one of the most common tickets given in the United States is for speeding. Speeding is one of the most reckless things a driver can do, and the easiest way to cause a death, whether the victim is the driver, passenger, or a pedestrian. Five miles per hour over the speed limit may seem like nothing, but it can scar a person both physically and emotionally. 

607 scholarship essays were submitted before mine, this year and this scholarship alone. That is at least 456,000 words explaining why driving should be more than exciting. The world has never been the same since Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot and Karl Benz. My world has never been the same since my father was hit. 607 teenagers have each found their own reason explaining how driving has changed the world. That’s why when children ask me if I enjoy driving, I have a heavy reason to hesitate.