“Get it sideways,” “It’s all fun and games until you hit something,” “If you are not first, you are last,” “Gas pedal is on the right,” “Drive fast; take chances!!”
Chances are, you may have heard at least one of these sarcastic phrases or something similar, at some point, growing up. Or if you are like me and grew up with a first responder as your parent, then you probably heard them more times than not. Of course it’s all in good fun and in a joking manner though and not actually meant to be taken literally. While all of those sarcastically entertaining ‘one-liners’ are meant for a good laugh, and bring along with them a sense of “home” to the situations they face daily, not everyone sees the same side of their displayed, dark humor to be appropriate, let alone humorous, especially by those affected by a personal and traumatic experience.
Allow me to take a moment and set the stage and shed a little light on a first responder’s world and their experiences, before I get to the heart of this message. They get called to help complete strangers in their worst time of need, and they respond without hesitation. They respond when they are tired, hungry or even when they are in the middle of their own crisis, they put it all on hold and put it all on the line for someone that they have never even met. They do this time and time again, because to them it’s a calling they were born to do and the things they see and experience that may affect them sort of get placed on the back burner without a second glance, particularly to the general public, especially if they have never been affected by trauma or had to call 9-1-1 for help.
Anyone who is willing to open up their minds to think rationally can understand and empathize with what a first responder goes through, to a certain degree. But, to better understand the reasons behind their bizarre behaviors and dark humor is an entirely different ballgame. The logical thought process, in the heat of the moment for a tragedy, when every stress signal is tested to the extreme, is when they respond. Keep in mind, they are responding to your emergency, not their own and they arrive in the midst of your chaos and craziness, in a cool, calm and collected manner. They can make several minutes of mayhem and madness feel like only seconds, as you are being cut out of a mangled car and they are laying next to you and talking you through the process and never leaving your side until you are safely extricated. Everything about their jobs is completely backwards, they knowingly and willingly run in towards the danger when everyone else runs away from it, and instead picks up their phone to video it. So it makes sense that some of their coping mechanisms are a little more morbid or unorthodox or just completely unhinged. One thing that is for certain, they see a lot of unimaginable things that most people never experience in an entire lifetime! Each of them has had their fair share of emergency calls that has impacted them in such a way that it forever changes them. Which explains a lot in why they say the things that they do, which just happens to be the exact opposite of how they actually perform their duties. Safety is a huge factor that plays into their jobs from the time they check into their station for their shift and it continues throughout with the utmost level of professionalism and safety standards in place even after their station tour has ended. Even though they may technically be off duty from station life, they are never truly off duty. I have been in the car with my mom, who is a career firefighter/EMT for twenty plus years and I have witnessed a motor vehicle collision happen right in front of us and watched her stop what we were doing and drop everything in order to help. Living in the same community that she serves, she has a “duty to act” even while she is off-duty and on her own leisurely time with her family and she does exactly that. I watched her pull a man out of a wrecked car and start CPR, a car that we watched fly off of the road and wreck into a forest of trees just moments before. This car was not stable and could have rolled down a ravine and even hurt her too or kill them both. She had no personal protective gear to protect her and no equipment to aid her in what she was doing, but it still didn’t stop her from responding immediately, controlling the scene to get this person the help they needed and deserved. I was pretty little when this happened, but it still left a lasting impact on me and now that I am driving myself, I try to take heed in all of the laws, safety warnings, and life’s lessons she feels the need to personally share, as well as, things I have experienced first-hand, on my own, as a teenage driver.
While my mom has seen her fair share of motor vehicle crashes (mvc's) over her career, she expresses the ones that hit the hardest for her are “running kids,” particularly ones close to the ages of her own children, especially when the majority of these incidents are preventable.
“According to the data NHTSA finds that 94% of all vehicle collisions are caused by human error.” (MHKYlaw.com). Therefore, making it preventable.
She, herself, not only has to watch out for bad drivers when she is not at work, but she especially has to pay extra close attention and do her best to anticipate danger when she is driving an emergency vehicle at work and she only has a split second to react to whatever maneuver that an inexperienced or distracted driver pulls right in front of her, in order to keep herself and her crew safe while driving in normal traffic, let alone when she is running lights and sirens.
She is considered to be a professional driver, specifically a Fire Apparatus Operator and she is held to a higher standard of driving than the general public. I hear all the stories about the unpredictability of how people react to the lights and sirens and it blows my mind to think that even if she follows all traffic laws and the other driver doesn’t and they still wreck into each other, she is held responsible until she can prove herself innocent by proof of negligence on the other driver, through a black box in the rig (much like what airplanes have), street cameras and credible witnesses, all of which are taken before an accident review board, where she is found to be at fault or not at fault. Every time she gets in her rig, she increases her chance of being involved in a motor vehicle crash and when she has to respond “emergency” to a call, her chances increase by 50 percent. She prides herself on safety just as much as she preaches the importance of it behind the wheel.
“ How do you expect to help anyone else if you don’t arrive alive and unscathed?” She's been known to sneak in her words of wisdom and experiences in casual ways, but it serves as a friendly reminder of just how lucky we really are and how many others are not! All it takes is one careless act to change the life or future of someone else, or even yourself, forever and most of the time it's preventable.
“Driving is a privilege, not a requirement”. It’s a much bigger responsibility than most seasoned drivers give credit to, until they find themselves at the wrong end of a fender bender. Categorically speaking, the Department of Transportation (DOT) for the state we reside in, reported 59,865 mvc statewide in the year 2023. Of those mvc’s reported, 11,035 involved drivers aged between 14-19 
According to Patterson Legal Group, 388 of those mvc's were notably fatality crashes. Young drivers have the highest number of accidents than any other age group. Why, do you ask?!
Teenage drivers are inexperienced, immature and distracted, which leads to poor decision-making and increased risk-taking behaviors. This is what is called the “D’s of driving”, distracted, drunk, drugged, drowsy and dangerous. These drivers are on their phones, doing their make-up, over confident in their driving skills when they are sober and worse when under the influence, checking their emails, driving while dealing with a crisis, driving without taking breaks, being pressured or influenced by peers in the same vehicle, etc. While we all know right from wrong, it does not always make a difference in the choices that we make, versus the choice we knew we should have made, but sometimes the outcome of those choices change the lives of families forever. I believe that if we, as society, care enough to push to make a positive change and effective difference in young drivers across the nation, there should be several restrictions and guidelines in place and other materials available at affordable prices. I feel that every driver should be required to take drivers education either through their high school or through any state approved program and not just rely on if they can take a written exam well and pencil whip the logged hours. There is no accountability in that. I also believe they should be required to score above an eighty percent in a driving simulator course similar to the one that police and fire departments are required to attend, that allows for real life scenarios with weather, speed, unexpected situations from other cars and require them to manage the stressful situation without damaging any property or hurting anyone in real life. Lastly, I also believe each driver, both young and old, should be required to take a defensive driving class every time they get a new license. This way it will allow for all drivers on the roadways to have a more keen sense of situational awareness and educate those drivers of real life scenarios that are or have become the biggest problem on the roadways. Allow each entity of first responders to come in and make an appearance and introduce a presentation of facts, notes, pictures and their own personal experiences that directly affected them, to help impact each of these young drivers in a different way and if it's possible to bring in a mangled up car to set in the parking lot at the local school for a week, like the M.A.D.D. program, getting everyone on board and working together.
You cannot expect things to change without taking a stand. Until these young drivers are well informed, educated, shown they are not invincible and impacted in a way that forces change, then things will never change and the alarms will still sound as often as they do. Let’s be the generation to make the change to be better!
Thank you.