Weighing the Keys

Thinking back, I had always perceived vehicles as immovable, inanimate objects that dropped me off from one destination to another. I grew up in a family closely associated with the automotive industry, as my grandfather owned and operated an auto shop with his siblings. Before he died, I remember fiddling with mechanisms that my childlike imagination coated in a fantastical lens, all of which my grandfather would display to my siblings and me, culminating in the technological workings of a minivan, truck, or whatever remnants of vehicles were in his garage. Most children such as I was are enamored with the idea of driving--we grow up watching movies where the hero drifts a corner to stop the scene of a crime or speeds off of a ramp to escape a fiery death, all of which I personally would attempt to recreate with a cardboard box with sloppily painted wheels or toy cars I would nab from my brother, so when it came time for me to carry the keys I was naturally thrilled. But what I didn’t expect was that with this newfound power, I was soon to be weighed down with twofold responsibility. I found it strange when my family members began to reach out to me, not to congratulate me as I expected, but rather to impart a kind of horrible wisdom that taxes the talent of driving. Around my sixteenth birthday, my grandfather’s brother, who helped in the workings of his auto shop, sat down with me to explain a burden that had weighed upon his childhood and would remain to harrow him to this very day. He recounted to me that on the day of his birthday, merely two days before Christmas, he and his family were visited in their small country home to be told that his big brother had been slaughtered in an auto accident. As I continued to practice driving with my learner’s permit, my Mom would sit beside me and explain the busy streets and what hours to avoid them, but what I remember most clearly was that every time we would pass a specific intersection a mile from home, we would both get quiet as if we were listening for something. I didn’t understand at the time that the location was where my mother’s close friend and coworker had died in a car accident, but now that I know this, the silence haunts me more than words ever could. As the stories from the people I knew increased in their frequency and earnestness, I began to feel as if we were all doomed to die in an accident. Each time I get behind the wheel, I still say a curt prayer before I start the engine. But at this point of mourning upon our inevitable doom, I had a revelation of sorts. Seeing how careless driving had consistently torn apart the people I cared about, I suddenly no longer perceived these machines as immovable, inanimate objects that were a key feature of my grandfather’s livelihood, but as souls. We all have control of our safety as each instance of driving we play out a life or death scenario. Every time I glance at the car beside me at the stoplight, my vision is overwhelmed by the person in the driver’s seat. Someone who I’ve never met and am sure has people who love them. I believe that this understanding is the key to being a responsible driver. This weight keeps my hands positioned on the wheel; eyes on the road rather than my phone; and full of a healthy, but not overwhelming, fear for myself and the people, not just cars, around me. Driving isn’t a novelty; it’s a responsibility that an overwhelming number of Americans are trusted with; in the words of the popular comic book author Stan Lee: “With great power comes great responsibility.” And with this new generation of drivers, we must learn to gather enough maturity to admit that it is far better to arrive alive than not at all. I don't just want to dedicate my words to the numbers who make up one of the leading cause of American deaths, I want to dedicate every time I drive safely to those personalities who are stripped down to merely another death on the road, the families who dot little white insignias and photographs on the side of the highway as a warning, and most especially the future drivers who I will one day share the road with and entrust with my safety.