I have been deeply impacted by irresponsible driving, my life was forever changed and one thing I was told the most was that I was lucky. To live in a world in which when you are in an accident that permanently physically disables you and gives you severe PTSD is lucky is insanity. I was a passenger in a car that was completely stopped on the freeway due to traffic. An elderly driver wanted to move an old Honda civic from his house to his sons. He put that Honda on a trailer to take it to his sons. However he did not act responsibly, the trailer did not have its own breaks so it was illegal for him to use to transport the Honda. He did not care and got on the freeway with the car on the trailer anyways, then he felt frustrated it was taking so long so he gunned the gas without looking ahead. He got up to 80 MPH and when he went to break he could not stop due to the weight of the car on his illegal trailer. We were hit with two 80 MPH impacts when we were stopped. His truck went up over our trunk and in the back window of our car. I was left with a severe brain injury and PTSD. All because he couldn’t be bothered to be responsible. I was 15 years old and my life was forever changed by his selfishness.
Societies attitude toward driving needs to change it is a positive thing that makes our lives infinitely easier, but it not only deadly but the deadliest thing we do every single day. Driving opens up our worlds allowing us to cross the state in an afternoon it is truly amazing. But I also believe a certain amount fear and realism is necessary we need to always remember just how deadly it is that your chances of death are greatly increased every time you get in a car. Even the most dangerous of things if done every day can become mundane. If you were to fly every day the turbulence that normally seems terrifying would become commonplace. When it gets windy on the freeway and your car shakes you don’t panic like you do with turbulence. That is because for most of us driving has become mundane and every day. This is incredibly dangerous it allows us to treat something as deadly as driving as no big deal. That is insane and leads to even more deaths.
Whenever I have the opportunity to, I remind the people around me just how dangerous driving is. I believe if we all take a more aggressively realistic approach to the dangers of driving it can help. For example, when I see my mother driving distracted I tell her how much I disapprove, that she is risking her live and the lives of everyone on the road for something as unimportant as a text. I ask her is that text really worth dying over? When my friends try to drive after drinking I tell them they are selfishly risking the lives of everyone else on the road and I will not stand for it. Is that approach aggressive? Yes, but so is death.
When I am on the road I have a constant reminder of just how dangerous it is, the PTSD from my accident. I believe if other people felt some of that fear and truly understood the danger they would behave much differently. Educating people about the dangers of driving is the best most realistic way to do this. Many people will never have the real life experience I had to make me understand the dangers of driving however, it is essential they do understand. Programs that can give people this understanding of the danger they are in are so important. It should not take a life and death situation for people to learn to be safe. The use of statistics and drawing parallels are important to help people understand something so dangerous that cant be seen. Such as the statistics on the DMV website about deaths in war vs every day driving deaths. When you put such a large abstract idea like the dangers of driving into an easy to understand comparison you can help people understand. Lastly I believe most people are good and would want to try to understand the dangers and would never want to hurt anyone else, so it is even more important to try to explain the dangers.