On The Other Side

Those of us who took driver’s education were told over and over again about the negative impacts of distracted driving. I live in Illinois, and all of my friends had the same requirements as I did to get their licenses – thirty hours of classroom driver’s ed, six hours of behind-the-wheel instruction, and fifty hours of driving on a permit with an adult. However, I still see a lot of my friends driving while texting, making phone calls, opening up their phones to skip songs on Spotify, and not giving their full attention to the road. I’ve noticed, even as an inexperienced, 18-year-old driver, I don’t do any of these things and would consider myself the best driver out of all my friends. Then I realized something that sets me apart as a driver – I was in a major car accident as a pedestrian. Sometimes, as drivers, we do not realize the impact of reckless or inattentive driving until we are the victim of it.

Luckily, I was taught the importance of safe driving and paying attention to one’s surroundings long before I could actually drive. It was when I was sixteen months old, on July 12, 2006, when my neighbor backed me over with his pickup truck in his driveway. This was in Tennessee, which to this day does not require a classroom driver’s education class to get a driver’s license – only a permit exam, behind-the-wheel lessons and fifty supervised driving hours. If you were to ask my mom, drivers in Memphis are notoriously reckless. My family moved to Colorado in 2008 and then to Illinois in 2018, but I can’t imagine how much worse the drivers in states like Tennessee have gotten since the rise of smartphones.

After being backed over, I broke my left femur and had to be in a half-body cast. I had to learn to walk all over again after I was healed. My mom was much more affected by it than I was, mostly because I was very young and didn’t remember it. For a while she was unable to leave me alone for even a minute so she could eat or shower. But the most lasting impact it’s had was on my mom’s driving. Her prerequisites for buying a car are pedestrian visibility and a backup camera. She drives with caution and has taught me to drive cautiously as well. She never drives if she’s even had one drink, always looks over her shoulder when changing lanes (which you’re supposed to do, but surprisingly a lot of people don’t!), and never touches her cell phone while on the road.

Fast forward to November 2022, I am seventeen years old and shopping for my first car, living in the suburbs of Chicago, where I had to complete driver’s ed, six hours of behind-the-wheel instruction, and fifty hours of permit driving to get my license, as well as an entire lifetime of listening to my mom talk about the importance of safe driving whenever I was in the car with her. We are at CarMax and I’ve decided I want a 2016 Kia Soul, but the closest one that had a backup camera was located in Indiana. Of course, I asked my family to drive me there so we could buy it. I practically had to beg them on the basis that I value having a backup camera not because I rely on it, but because I believe it’s a good safety feature that helps me see what is in the lower to the ground space I can’t see by looking out my rear windshield – such as a small child.

Now that I am a licensed driver with my own car, I always take great care to drive safely and without distractions. I am extremely cautious when backing out of my driveway because a lot of my neighbors’ children play in the street. I’m always cautious and vigilant of other cars when making turns or lane changes. I never even touch my cell phone, not even for music or phone calls.

In all honesty, I don’t think I would be as cautious of a driver as I am if I hadn’t been in that life-changing accident. It shouldn’t take being run over by a truck to understand the consequences of reckless, distracted, and poor driving. All states need to implement an extensive driver’s education requirement for people to get their licenses, because many other children in states like Tennessee were in similar accidents to mine and did not survive.