It’s November 23rd, 2024. The air is crisp and cold. A caravan of trucks is pulling roughly a ton of wood over to have a bonfire. The night goes well. Everyone has fun and the wood is all burnt out and gone. It hits one in the morning, and everyone agrees that it is time to go home. We hook up the trailer and begin to head down the dirt road. Everyone buckles up. Everything is going smoothly, and our driver is going at a safe speed. A sharper left turn comes up and the driver takes it wide due to the trailer needing some extra space. What no one saw was the gravel patch that we had just turned into, and all the sudden we’re sliding out and fish tailing. Its dark and the road drops off into a ditch, but the driver is doing everything is his power to make sure that doesn’t happen. Despite the driver’s efforts, the trailer pushing the truck only aids in causing the truck to catch an edge similar to a snowboard and flings us over the edge of the embankment. We proceeded to roll three times. I remember vividly watching the front curtain airbags going off and watching anything lose within the truck start to rotate mid air within. I brace for impact and wait to stop rolling. The driver wakes up from hitting his head hard on the roof and we all crawl out the back window. We were so far away that the officers and medics arrived an hour after our call to assist with everything. Had none of us been wearing our seatbelts things could have gone much worse. Our driver ended up with microfractures on his neck and broken ribs because he wasn’t wearing one. In reality he should have been ejected and. to this day we still don’t know how that didn’t happen.
Seatbelts saved us from many injuries that day and possibly some of us dying. I think that there needs to be a way to regulate a way to make sure that people are buckled up. I now understand the importance of seatbelts and didn’t until I was suspended above my friend looking down at him thinking about how much worse that could have been. I do wonder if there could be systems implemented into cars so that they wouldn’t allow the driver to drive the car if they weren’t buckled. I can understand the inconvenience if you just had to back your car out of the driveway among other things. However, I believe that if a system like this was implemented it would drastically reduce the number of serious injuries and death on roadways.
One of the most important steps that is already in place is Drivers Education. I believe that for kids this is one of the best things that they can go through. It gives a very strong theoretical foundation for young drivers to understand situations they will encounter on the road and how to respond. I firmly believe that this is a large factor in the reduction of accidents and deaths caused on roadways. However, I believe that there should be an extra section or more added to drivers’ education. It does a good job of covering everything about basic roadways, however it does not do a good job of explaining canyon driving or basic dirt road driving and off-roading. If there was more material in those two sections I believe drivers would be better equipped with knowledge of how to drive dirt roads and canyons which in turn will reduce accidents.
I believe that some steps that I can take to be a better driver is to make sure when I am driving, I’m not tired. I could also change my music less. I do a good job of getting off of my phone, but I do change my music more than I should. One thing that I can do to help others become better drivers is to make sure I encourage seatbelts. Also, I want to make sure that my siblings who are just now starting drivers’ education know how to and feel very comfortable driving canyons and dirt roads. I want to make sure that they have the knowledge to be safe when they are in situations that most people won’t be in and know what to do when everything goes wrong. I feel the importance of knowing how to drive backroads in any car cannot be understated. Another way I believe I can help others be safer on the road is making sure I always keep a safe following distance from others so they don’t feel like they are pressured to go faster then they need to and have the peace of mind that I am far enough behind that I can avoid any situations that could injure us.
Because of the close calls that I have had in my life and experiences being in near death situations a put a harder emphasis on safe driving. And being an older brother, I want my siblings to be safe on the road.