The date was March 13, 2021 and my clock read 9:30 pm. I was lazily sitting on my bed, scrolling through social media, when I heard a loud bang just outside my window. I didn’t think anything of it until I saw the bright red lights shining on my room walls. The loud sirens rang through my head as the emergency trucks approached my apartment complex. Barefoot, I stepped on the cold white tiles on the floor, put my shoes on, and took a step onto the welcome mat just outside the door. Five police cars had enclosed the area, and the investigators were rapidly placing yellow caution tape around the scene. My heart began pounding as frightening thoughts filled my head. I walked to the curb, turning my head left and right to see what had happened. All I noticed from afar was a white cloth placed on top of what seemed like a dead man. I was correct.
My neighbors were standing outside their doors, whispering amongst themselves. Nervously and impatiently, I watched the detectives take pictures of the scene and eavesdropped on the cops secretly. “Yeah she was driving double the speed limit and she crashed into another car down the street,” the cop said deeply. Concerning assumptions were running through my head until one of the cops came over and began explaining.
The suspect was a 19-year-old girl who was driving at least twice the speed limit when she killed the pedestrian. She did a hit-and-run, and continued to drive uncontrollably until she hit another car farther down the road. The driver had her headlights off in hopes of not drawing attention to her careless driving. The victim was in his twenties, crossing the road to his parked car when she hit and launched him into the wires of the large cable towers, throwing him 180 feet from the crash scene into a nearby yard. The victim was my neighbor.
Before the policemen arrived that night, another boy that lives in the complex had taken a picture of the man that died. The victim was wearing his ARCO gas station sweater and his name tag had blood stains. The boy approached his father, showing him the victim’s body. That was when the yelling started. The dad began shouting, “That is my son!” Both the father and the son dropped to their knees on the blacktop, sobbing and smacking their hands on their heads, trying to process what they had seen. My heart dropped, and the people observing the scene had their mouths wide open and tears coming down their eyes. The boy took a picture of the dead man, not knowing it was his brother. The father has to live without his son and the boy needs to live without his brother just because a reckless teenage girl was driving fast “for the fun of it.” How “fun” is ending someone’s life?
This incident, along with the millions of other lives lost due to reckless driving, proves the importance of driver’s education. This crucial information teaches drivers how to safely operate their vehicles on the road, which can reduce the likelihood of an accident occurring. However, having this educational knowledge of road safety that can save lives is useless if it is not put into use. Many people know the rules of the road and know how to drive safely, but they choose not to. The lives of citizens should not be in danger because others choose to break the law.
Wearing a seatbelt, not getting behind the wheel if you’re under the influence of alcohol or other drugs, and driving strategically are steps that can be taken to reduce deaths related to driving. Personally, I have no experience being in an accident. I always fasten my seatbelt before I drive, put my phone on Do Not Disturb, and always check my surroundings. I learned these habits through the driver’s education course I took before receiving my license. My uncle, however, drives very irresponsibly. He greatly exceeds the speed limit, zig-zags through cars, and is constantly distracted by his phone. The beeping sound the car makes from the unbuckled seat belt lasts throughout the whole car ride and hearing the loud exhaust as he zooms past cars is the sound of danger. Being hours late to an event, appointment, or work is much better than living your whole life knowing that you were the reason someone doesn't have theirs. Drivers need to follow the signs, be aware of their surroundings, and know which exits or turns are coming up. Signals and headlights are tools created for our benefit, so we should be using them oftenly. If the pedestrian saw the driver’s headlights, he would have backed up and not crossed at that time, saving his own life. I believe that if all drivers drove according to the road laws, there would be no accidents.