“That one car accident that changed my life as a driver”

It was a beautiful sunny day that turned cold almost instantly when the car flipped over and crashed. About a year ago, my little sisters and I were in a very traumatic car accident with our older sister who was driving. I remember the accident like it happened yesterday, the music was blasting and I was in the passenger seat a little nervous because my sister was a newer driver, but I trusted her so, I tried to hide my nerves. We were driving on the highway and a vehicle beside us passed us fiercely and the driver of the other vehicle indicated that they wanted to race. I looked at my sister, hoping that she would not engage but, I could tell by the look on her face there was nothing I could say that would have her change her mind. My heart started pounding as her miles per hour got higher and higher. Since I was not the driver, it was out of my control there was nothing that I could do but pray that everything was going to be okay. I remember my window being down and my phone flying out the window because the car was going so fast. At that very moment, I knew my sister lost control of her car and we were in big trouble. All I remember is seeing her swerve the car and it going straight into the median and feeling my body drag along the ground until the car came to a stop. I remember crawling out of the car with my hands and knees on the ground covered with glass. My body felt like it was on fire and all I saw was blood, it was dripping down my arms and blood all over my hands. I could not breathe, I could not help but scream because I was in so much pain. An officer finally got there and I kept asking him for an ambulance, after what felt like an eternity an ambulance finally came. I lay in the ambulance truck crying, I was crying because I was hurt, I was crying because of fear, there were so many reasons that I could not stop crying. All I remember was me asking them were my sisters, okay, they told me that they were okay and I felt a little bit better. They rushed me to the hospital and immediately they started testing and scanning me. I was so scared I just wanted it to all be over. The doctor had to give me stitches and he talked me through it the whole time. That was the only car accident I ever was in and it had me scared, I did not want to get in cars with anyone after that happened. I was a new driver myself and I learned so many lessons from that one car accident.

Although I was not the driver it taught me to always drive the speed limit because if we were not driving so fast she could have had the opportunity to stop the vehicle but since she was going so fast she lost control of the car. “Speeding is considered to be risky, affecting both the probability of being involved in traffic accidents as well as the severity of injuries caused by accidents”(Elvik et al., 2004, Mullen et al., 2015). This statistic shows that there is no positive outcome from speeding, and it causes nothing but danger on the road. Any driver that plans on diving safe will simply follow the speed limit to try to prevent from anything dangerous happening.

Another lesson that I learned is to never allow anyone to peer pressure me while on the road. She was driving well before the other driver indicated that they wanted to race her. If she would have ignored them we might not have gotten into the car accident. I want to expose that things like this happen on the road all the time; and that you do not have to engage in dangerous behavior on the road simply because of peer pressure. There are many times when I am driving on the road and civilians try to peer pressure me into breaking the rules because it may seem like a quicker and easier route but my life and everyone else’s on the road is too valuable to risk it all for a few seconds. An example of how individuals try to peer pressure me would be if I am not driving fast enough for them they beep their horns at me to drive faster, but I do not allow anyone to force me to drive past the speed limit I simply allow them to go around me.

To be a safe driver you have to know the rules and follow them, regardless of any pressures going on around you. I hope my story can save many lives for anyone driving on the road.

References

Sahebi, S., Nassiri, H., Van Wee, B., & Araghi, Y. (2019). Incorporating car owner preferences for the introduction of economic incentives for speed limit enforcement. Transportation research part F: traffic psychology and behaviour, 64, 509-521.