Driving is an action we all partake in during our everyday, normal lives. Most of the time, we just get in the car and drive, not thinking twice about being careful, or wondering if we will make it home or not. Driving is such a normal thing, that people don’t fully understand the dangers of distracted driving until they or their loved ones experience an accident due to distractions or recklessness on the road. As a teenager, I have witnessed many horrible car accidents which my friends and family were involved in, but for me, it wasn’t a car accident that changed my life, it was a golf cart accident. It is important to realize not only the dangers of driving cars, but the dangers of driving in general, no matter what vehicle you are operating. When I was a freshman in high school, I experienced a traumatic accident which changed how careful I am on the road. Just because this accident wasn’t in a car, does not mean it couldn’t have been avoided.
I always knew how to drive a golf cart, as it isn’t necessarily rocket science. When this accident occurred, I was not driving, one of my friends was. We all had been experienced and thought we knew what we were doing, but clearly we did not. We liked to drive fast and we didn’t slow down much, which is what led us to this awful predicament. The last thing I remember before blacking out was we were going full speed and ran a stop sign in the neighborhood, which caused us to hit a pothole at full speed. Because of this irresponsible decision, the golf cart flipped on its side, with me on the back and my two friends in the front. We were just a bunch of teens having fun, never did we think it would lead us to this outcome. The importance of slowing down when needed and obeying traffic laws no matter where you are or what your driving is extreme. If we would have slowed down for the pothole in the road, we would have never experienced any of this trauma, and it could have saved us from the lasting effects of this accident.
The trauma of this accident for my fifteen year old self was long lasting. I ended up passing out for about a minute, my friends told me, not remembering anything when I first woke up. I was constantly asking what happened for days afterward, not remembering why I had to go to the hospital. Not only did it afefct my memory, but my academic progress as well. I am in the international baccalaureate program at my high school, so at the time I was taking many honors and pre-IB classes, which were not easy and required a lot of time and effort. Being concussed for the whole fourth quarter of that year impacted my progress in school immensely. I remember trying to navigate all the missing work from being out of school and on top of that, final exams were coming up, which didn’t make it any better. I truly believe this accident was a huge part of the reason my grades and GPA significantly worsened in freshman year.
The moral of this story is that despite the dangers of driving, immaturity and failure to follow rules can result in traumatic events which sometimes can leave lifelong effects. I truly believe that I would be in a different spot academically and possibly have more student aid if my GPA and grades werent so insanely affected by this preventable accident. But I have learned that accidents like this make us better people in the long run. I had to overcome this and get my academics back on track. This experience taught me how to persevere and has molded me into the person I am today with dedication and drive to be successful in my future academics and the workforce. I truly believe that most accidents, especially those which teenagers are involved in or cause, are due to irresponsibility on the road. If we all paid a little more attention while driving and followed all traffic laws all the time, I believe that the average percent of accidents and fatalities due to accidents would decrease significantly. Not only would that be a good thing in itself, but the long lasting trauma and injuries which come with these accidents. These terrible accidents and the tragedies which come with it could be avoided if we just paid more attention to how we are driving, no matter what vehicle you are operating at the time.