A Self Confession: Red Really Does Mean Stop

As a young teenager slowly creeping up on the intense world of adulthood, there was nothing occupying my mind more often than getting my driver’s license, but I never knew how to approach my parents and tell them that the time had come for me to get on the road with them as another driver. Eventually, I walked into my parents’ room and told my dad that I wanted to go to the DMV and take the written test to officially begin the process, since I had been studying for it egregiously up to that point in preparation for this day. “Un dia que no sea hoy (someday that’s not today),” my dad responded, which got me excited, as that was almost his backwards way of saying “yes”. I knew my mom was not terribly thrilled at the idea of seeing her young boy join the world of drivers, but I could not wait anymore, I needed to get behind the wheel. Not that it was my first time, I practiced driving on many occasions with my dad in empty parking lots on his days off, and I thought of myself as a natural (after my first attempt, where I mistook the gas for the brake, and vice versa). Do not get me wrong, though, because I was already well aware of the high risk that is associated with driving, it is something that I saw all the time when I was in the backseat and my dad drove us around the city.

I was a little kid at the time, still in elementary school if I remember correctly, and I was sleeping in the backseat of my dad’s old Buick with my older brother, while my younger brother stayed awake for the ride home. Since I was awake, I cannot speak as a voucher, but I recall so clearly opening my eyes and seeing blaring red and blue lights, which I immediately recognized as being the active lights of a police car who pulled my dad over. I was not fond of the police as a kid due to some familial issues and involvement with CPS, so I pretended to stay asleep, but from what I heard and what my parents told me several years later when I was more mature, my dad was pulled over for speeding, and warned that if he were issued such a citation again with his kids in the car, he would face serious consequences and potentially have us taken away from his and my mom’s care. My dad was always a bit of a reckless driver, I will be the first to admit that before he does: no turn signals, running red lights, rolling stops, speeding, shortcuts that “experienced” drivers use on a daily basis to make their driving more “efficient”, to get where they need to be. Even at that age, I was smart enough to comprehend that no place is worth traveling towards so erratically that you put dozens of lives on the road in danger, so I have always felt a sting towards reckless drivers, and that includes my dad every time I got in the car with him, but my mom hated driving, so that is how the years went by until I got my license.

Since I was still a sophomore in high school, I did not have my own car, but my girlfriend at the time had one that her stepmom gave to her, but she did not have her license. As ironic as that whole ordeal sounds, the daily routine was to drive my girlfriend’s car to her house so that we could hangout after school, and sometimes I would spend the night over. Naturally, then, when homecoming came around, she wanted to go. It was not my thing at all to attend school dances, but she was ecstatic, so I could not refuse. The drive there was perfectly fine, but as I suspected, the night died down quickly and the event boiled down to just another generic, flavorless, high school dance, so we decided to leave early. It was around 10:00 PM, and all I could think about was getting back to her place to sleep, meaning my mind was not on the road and what was going on in front of me—monumental mistake.

A nasty habit that I developed early on as a driver was to constantly, frequently check my speedometer to confirm that I was within the speed limit, since that was hardwired into my brain by my parents. That is precisely what I kept doing the night of homecoming as I was driving back to my girlfriend’s house, and unbeknownst to me, a traffic light was coming. Since I was too busy assessing my speed and maintaining that title of “perfect driver”, I did not notice that my light was red, and I blew right past it. My girlfriend, I could tell from her voice when she said “babe”, was shocked and obviously concerned, and when I looked at my center mirror to see behind us, there was clearly a car who drove across the intersection that I just violated. To put it simply, I was both embarrassed and thankful to God for saving the two of us that day, because if that car had been going faster, or if I had been going slower, I do not know if I would be able to sit here and make this confession today. But that was only the first incident.

Again in my girlfriend’s car, I was driving her and her mom somewhere for business that her mom had to attend to, I cannot remember what it was. The two of them were arguing, per the usual, when I approached this intersection in a small neighborhood. Two out of the four roads had stop signs, one of which was mine, but I only figured that out after I blew my stop sign and came a few inches away from being side swiped by another car that was driving through the intersection without stopping, as they did not have a stop sign. My heart began racing, but the two squabblers with me did not seem to notice or be phased at all. I asked if I was the one with the stop sign, and neither of them knew, so I continued driving, blocking out their jabs towards one another with my own voices asking how I could have missed a stop sign. The answer is obvious now, but the most common illness for young adolescents is ignorance, and I had a lethal injection of it. All of that nonsense of being the quintessential driver was just that—nonsense. In reality, I was no better than the group of belligerent drivers who I continuously frowned upon for their selfishness in regards to others on the road, and to this day and forward, I will never be proud of those early driving days. To put it frankly, I almost killed myself and a few others because of my irresponsibility.

It is shaking just writing that preceding sentence, but the truth is, I am here now, and nothing I can do can change what almost happened years ago. With a more sound and experienced voice, I want to spill my theories to identify the proximate cause of those near collisions, and suggest ways that can stop future young drivers from making the same mistakes I did. There is no beating around the bush; ultimately, the blame belongs to me, the driver, but in regards to the incident with the phantom stop sign that I ignored, it is fair to look at the passengers and their behavior too. When you get in a car, as a passenger, there are certain implied precautions that need to be taken to put safety above everything, the most obvious one that was broken in this situation being to not be a distraction to the driver. With that said, most of our expertise, we derive from our parents, and that does not necessarily have to carry a negative connotation, provided some adjustments be made.

The most basic fix is to intervene early on, to inform young teeangers about the dangers of careless driving, to help them understand that as a driver, the number one priority is to drive in a fashion that does not endanger the lives of everyone else on the road. Not only that, but I highly recommend that the DMV initiate a new program, called the “Parent Instructors Program (PIP)”, where parents wishing to teach their children how to drive before acquiring their permits need to be registered as an adult who is able to demonstrate the appropriate fundamentals of safe driving for their children early on, to align with my earlier assertion that driver’s ed courses need to step in before young drivers set rubber to asphalt, not after. This program can be funded federally and offer training for parents who wish to obtain certification or license to guide their childrens’ driving in areas deemed appropriate, like empty parking lots during designated hours. Again, my dad did teach me all I know about driving, but that is not automatically a good thing if his knowledge for safety is virtually nonexistent. My face boils anytime I am on the road today back home and see someone blazing down the road trying to break the sound barrier with their speed, so this program needs to step in and take control before it is too late, so that these roads do not have to suffer through another sophomore version of me who forgot the basics: that green means go, and red means stop.