Our Actions as Drivers and Their Consequences

   My education in driving was far from typical. The first time I drove to a destination on my permit, I was rear-ended by a distracted driver while entering the movie theater parking lot. She didn’t look much older than myself. My mom’s car ended up needing a frame pull and took two months to get back. I learned very early on the consequences of distracted driving because of that. Once I was back on the road with my newly fixed car, I ran into too many unsafe drivers to count. I was tailgated, illegally passed, and even cut off so quickly that I and my driving instructor both had to slam on the brakes in order to avoid collision. We pulled over and I took a minute to calm down. I was so afraid. That driver’s actions could have put both of us in hospital beds, but I had no say in the matter.

    Our actions as drivers have consequences, but not just for us. When people make reckless decisions while driving, they make the decision to endanger both themself and the people around them. Even when an accident is not at the fault of the person in the other car, they must suffer the consequences of the actions that the driver at fault chose to make.Thisc an make driving frightening. When we get into the driver’s seat, we as drivers become responsible for the safety of ourselves, our passengers, and the people we share the road with. We have an obligation as drivers to preserve that safety. One may wonder how driving can be safe at all when their safety rests partially in the hands of someone they don’t even know. Fortunately, when we drive safely, we’re not just keeping others safe- we’re taking actions that will keep us safe in the event that we are faced with a reckless driver.

   As I was nearing the end of my education in driving and preparing for my road test, I learned the most important lesson about driving, and I didn’t learn it during one of my driving lessons. On June 29th, a car containing four newly graduated teenagers got into a head-on collision with a wrong-way driver on the highway. All of the people in the car were critically injured. The driver smashed many of her teeth, and ended up losing half of her tongue because she bit through it on impact. One of the passengers, Chris Dailey, suffered severe brain damage and died in the hospital a few days later. According to news reports, the wrong-way driver had been driving in the wrong lane for five miles, and had also allegedly picked up a phone call from his wife shortly before colliding with the car containing the teens. Had the man not picked up his phone, or had he quickly checked that he was driving in the correct lane, those four teenagers would have gone home safely. Chris Dailey could have made it home alive, but instead his hockey jersey number has been retired, and my town mourns his presence. 

   Because teenagers have grown up with the presence of technology, it is often feared that they are at the highest risk to drive distracted and get into accidents. The accident that Chris Dailey and his friends got into proves that it’s not just teens who are at risk to cause accidents by driving distracted.Teenagers are hounded about the risks of reckless driving, taught to memorize ticket fines, and shown video demonstrations of how easy it is to get into a car accident while distracted, but after taking the permit test, they don’t hear much about any of those things again. Adults need to be reminded of the risks of driving just as much as teenagers do, because car accident risks don’t just go away past a certain age. Consistent public reminders are necessary in order to remind adults and teens alike to keep their eyes on the road and to practice safe driving habits. 

   Accidents are exactly that- accidents. People seldom ever get into car accidents on purpose, but the actions taken that cause them are a choice that is consciously made. When it seems tempting to cross those yellow lines because we’re running late for work, or when a matter feels so pressing that it wouldn’t hurt to go a little over the speed limit, we must be mindful of the people around us. There is nothing as valuable as the human lives inside of the cars that we share the road with, and because of that we must do everything we can to protect ourselves and others when driving.