Safe driving is the importance of life

Growing up, my family always told the story of my grandmother hitting a patch of black ice on the way home from a Christmas family trip. In the story, no one is hurt; they are shaken but not hurt. The vehicle was damaged but safe to drive the remainder of the way home, and it is a seemingly happy story. Let's think about it, though: if my grandmother was not a safe driver, as in if she didn't know how to turn into the skid and tried to recover the car incorrectly, how many lives would have been destroyed? In the vehicle alone were my mom, her two siblings, her two parents, an uncle, and an aunt. Any one of them could have been lost. Let's assume the cars around them weren't aware of what was going on, or Grandma steered into one of them, or multiple other vehicles. It was wintertime, obviously; most of the people on the road with them were returning home from Christmas break also. My grandmother could have collided with any number of other vehicles, all of which could have caused them to lose their lives as well. But Grandma's understanding of safe driving helped prevent further damage to her vehicle and to the vehicles around them. Typically, when people think about safe driving, they usually only consider personal control of the vehicle. Instead, safe driving is the responsibility of protecting yourself and all those on the road with you. 

Black ice is a thin layer of clear ice that forms on the road. Because it is clear, it appears as the road that is beneath it. This thin layer, taking on the color or appearance of the road beneath it, makes it impossible to be detected by drivers. When the tires hit the ice, they lose traction, meaning they have no friction to speed up or slow down; additionally, drivers tend to lose the ability to steer normally. This would be like when playing on the slip and slide, you glide and slide, but you have no control of which way you go once the sliding begins. Now that we understand why black ice is an issue, let's understand how Grandma protected everyone. 

In the original story, Grandma steers the car into the skid. What does this mean? When the back of the car slides to the left, you steer to the left, and when the back of the car slides to the right, you steer to the right. Slamming on the brakes or punching on the gas only makes all the fishtailing or flailing of the back of the vehicle worse. Instead, Grandma chose to take her foot off of the gas, gently steer the vehicle into the slide, and wait until she could feel that the tires had traction again. Additionally, all the cars on the road around them also saw what was going on, and they were traveling at a safe distance away from each other so that they too were able to protect themselves and the others on the road with them. When traveling too close together and leaving no safe distance between you and the cars around you, you leave yourself in too close a space together, and that is what leads to multi-car pile-ups. The combination of Grandma's safe driving and the other occupants of the surrounding vehicles' safe driving ensured everyone got home safely. 

With everyone on the road traveling at a safe distance between vehicles and Grandma steering the car safely, the family was protected, and other drivers were protected. Grandma remaining calm and using the correct driving skills also helped protect everyone else on the road. Remember, this was near Christmas break; it could have easily become a bad pile-up, creating havoc for many families. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, driving sober, paying full attention, and following speed limits prevent thousands of tragedies a year. 

According to the Department of Transportation, 1,300 to 1,600 people die every year in motor vehicle crashes involving snowy, slushy, or icy pavements. Black ice is easily a factor in this statistic and could potentially cause fatalities. A driver who doesn't know how to drive safely in these conditions could also lead to disaster for multiple cars and families. We need to remember that every time we get in our vehicles, we carry our lives but also those of the vehicles around us; it is our responsibility to make sure we get home, and those around us have the opportunity to get home also.