A Deadly Adventure

I
was reading in my living room, with my legs tucked under me. Since it
was the middle of June, I was out of school, so I had all the time in
the world to read as much as I wanted. I looked down at my book while
my parents talked in shocked tones.

Five
high school girls, four of them intoxicated, were in a car crash in
the next town over. All of them were fifteen and sixteen, but only
one of them survived. I’m given the talk about not to drive while
drunk and sent on my way.

Flash
forward a few months. It’s September now, and I’m driving in the
car with my dad. As we sit at a red light for a while, he takes out
his phone. Suddenly, his eyebrows knit together in concern. As we sit
at the light, he tells me that a ten-year-old girl in our town was
hit and killed while crossing the street from an ice cream parlor.
The driver was nineteen years old.

A
man honks the horn behind us. My dad puts his phone down and drives
away.

In
a few months, I am going to be handed the keys to a car for the first
time. As soon as June comes and my age tips over into fifteen, I will
be given keys, a parent to accompany me, and a free-range of the
road. It’s the dream of every American teenager; cemented into
place by movies like
License to Drive
and Need
for Speed.

Even
most car commercials focus on freedom and exhilaration, with
professional drivers doing insane stunts to show us why we should
want to drive. The classroom may teach one how to drive, but our
culture teaches us how to treat driving.

I’m
not sure that I want to drive. Or at the very least, every time I set
out into the practice lot, I get a wave of anxiety. If I can’t stop
driving over curbs or properly park, how do I know that I won’t
back over or hit someone while trying to focus on the millions of car
dials?

As
time goes on, driving anxiety passes. People become more comfortable
with driving, much like riding a bike, and this worries me. The more
comfortable one is, the more risks they take. They might reach down
to check my phone for four seconds, and during that time, they will
cross the length of a football field—all while driving blind.

Driving
is not something that should be taken lightly. To drive a car is to
have the power to take a life, and people must take care to remember
this. There is no quick hack to remain safe on the road; everything
one needs to save their life and others is given to them on a silver
platter.

Turn
off the phone, buckle up, and keep your eyes on the road.

I
will, and you should too.