The Jamison Alarm

My dad’s truck beeped as he had not yet put on his seatbelt. “They’re after you,” he told me. I had no idea what he was talking about, but I was five years old and terrified. My dad deemed the beeping noise the ‘Jamison Alarm’, just putting my name in front of the word “alarm,” and told me that whenever that alarm went off, people would come to take me away. I believed this narrative for at least two years, always scared of what might happen if the ‘Jamison Alarm’ went off again. It’s probably the stupidest thing I could have believed in. But, I soon noticed a pattern and begged my dad to put his seatbelt on no matter what, just so that the alarm wouldn’t go off. As outrageous as it might sound, I’m forever grateful that I believed that the alarm had real consequences and that my father had experienced me telling him countless times to put his seatbelt on.

As my dad was driving home from work early one morning, just after the bars had closed for the night, he was hit by a drunk driver who had run a red light and collided with the driver’s side of his truck. Emergency teams had to be called to cut my father out of his vehicle, away from the deployed airbags and the shrapnel that surrounded him. He couldn’t breathe and couldn’t talk, and with three broken ribs and a shoulder blade that had been fractured in three places, he couldn’t move much, either. He was immediately transported to a high-level trauma care center. Inside that center, there were patients chained to walls who were screaming out, and yet my father was being rushed inside as doctors commented that he was the patient in the worst condition there.

My father, someone who has always had a “rub some dirt on it” mentality, reported his pain levels as being an eleven out of ten, something absolutely unheard of for him. When he was finally released from the hospital after days of being supervised by medical professionals and being on pain medicine, it was too painful for him to even sleep in a bed, and the couch became where he rested for three weeks. Yet, he still walked me to school and made time to talk with me about my day and what I learned. He went to the library with me and read to me for hours, despite the pain that he was in. Though I didn’t understand it then, I know now that a seatbelt saved my father’s life. As a driver, myself, I never go anywhere without first wearing a seatbelt. My passengers know that the car won’t start moving until their seatbelts are on.

Though vehicular accidents are a leading cause of death across America, it frightens me to think about what the numbers would show if Driver Education wasn’t seen as something that is so crucial to new, and even experienced, drivers. It’s of paramount importance to realize the responsibility that one takes on when they get behind the wheel of a vehicle. Whether you push a button or turn a key, once you start a car, you are solely responsible for operating a piece of machinery that can take you across a country or end someone’s life, even your own. Blowing a stop sign, speeding in a neighborhood, or getting behind the wheel after a night out at a bar with friends may seem trivial at the moment, but it can be detrimental in the end.

Being in high school, I’ve seen so many of my peers drive without care, their prefrontal cortexes not yet developed enough to aid them in making completely morally sound decisions. When a friend of mine feels too tired to drive, I’m always the first to offer them a ride to wherever they’re trying to go. If I know a friend is driving somewhere, I won’t attempt to contact them in hopes of reducing the number of distractions in their driving environment. I find myself constantly hoping that my friends and loved ones are safe on the road, because even if they exhibit responsible driving practices, others may not. After all, my dad is one of the safest drivers that I know, but he could have been stripped from me through no fault of his own.

Every day, I’m grateful that I was so frightened of the ‘Jamison Alarm.’ Without it, my dad would never have been at every school play, every dance recital, every football game, or every time I cried about not understanding a math problem. My father has taught me what it means to serve people and to be loyal to your family. He’s taught me how to be respectful and how to be patient. Without a seatbelt, without him, those lessons would have been lost forever. Though it’s been years since his accident, my father still experiences pain from his accident and doesn’t like to talk about that morning. However, he will say one thing to me: “drive safe, wear your seatbelt.”