In Just a Matter of Seconds

I was eight years old. I sat in the backseat of a gray toyota tundra truck next to my little brother, who must have been about six. My mom had just picked us up from school, and she was driving us down the main road that winds through our little small-town businesses nestled in the northern Sierra Nevada foothills. As she drove, my brother and I talked playfully as siblings do; laughing at jokes, teasing eachother, showing off a new bouncyball that one of us had found at school. My mom was driving us home like any other day, and was expecting to pull into our driveway in about 5 to 10 minutes. She never would have thought that she was actually going to arrive home some 7 hours later, and she wouldn’t be the one driving.

Just as we passed the small auto shop, something smashed into us. The world around us suddenly became ten times louder and we were spinning out of control. The car kept spinning and spinning for what seemed like an eternity until it finally came to an abrupt, bone-startling halt. When I lifted my head to look around, the truck was perpendicular to the road, in the wrong lane, and a large part of the hood seemed to be either warped or missing altogether. As the air started to fill with the smell of smoke, my mom’s head lifted from the airbag. Panicked, she turned around and yelled at us if we were ok. That’s when my brother and I started to cry.

It was a freak accident. An older man had been driving a smaller white truck headed the other way. He momentarily fell asleep at the wheel and drifted into our lane, hitting us head on. After the collision, we spun out of control to the other side of the road. The reason we finally stopped spinning was because the tires eventually hit a bush-lined curb that stretched in front of the parking lot to one of the small businesses. By the time our vehicle had stopped moving and was directly facing the building, the other truck had careened and smashed into the ditch on the opposite side. After my family and I were safely removed from the car by fellow drivers or pedestrians, we sat down in the parking lot. My mom started to make frantic phone calls to my father, and eventually the EMT’s arrived. As they checked us for injuries, they noticed my mom was in serious pain from hitting the airbag. With an ambulance on the way, she had to lay on the ground as the paramedic attached a collar-brace to her neck. We all waited for the emergency vehicle, then we had to wait some more for my dad to arrive because the crash had caused serious traffic. All the drivers still on the highway had to wait because the fire crew was having trouble getting the other man out of his now distorted white truck. He was in bad shape and it didn’t help that the vehicle had bursted into flames. We waited even longer for close-by family members to come pick up my brother and I. This allowed my dad to meet my mom at the hospital when the traffic cleared. Esentially, we ended up waiting in that parking lot for hours. But the crash itself happened in a matter of seconds.

I know this seems like a lengthy and very detailed personal account, which it is. But in reality, incidents just like this happen every single day, and many aren’t as lucky. On average, there are over 6 million car accidents a year in the US alone, and 2021 resulted in 42,915 fatalities. As a teenage driver myself, it scares me knowing that these accidents are the number one cause of teen death. It also scares me knowing that my family and friends are all put at the same risk as soon as they sit in the driver’s seat. This is why driver education is so incredibly important. Not only does it teach students the ways of the road and how to properly operate a vehicle, but it illustrates the tremendous sense of responsibility they must take. Once they take hold of the steering wheel, both their life and the lives of others are in their hands.

A part of driver education that I believe is very significant is the concept of defensive driving. The reality is, it doesn’t matter if you are the safest driver in the world, you still don’t have control over what happens on the road or behind the wheel of other cars. It is impossible to know any event that might come next. My mom sure didn’t know that she’s be headed to the hospital in an ambulance on that fateful day of the accident. After many people get their liscence, especially teens, a new sense of freedom and invincibility seems to settle in. But we need to remember that driving still puts us at risk even after we are educated. Making sure that you are a defenisive driver means that you’re not just aware of your own actions, but the actions of others. Are people really stopping at the intersection when there’s a red light? Does the driver behind you actually see that you’re merging on the highway? Is someone ahead of you drifting into your lane? I wish we could live in a world where we can mutually trust everyone on the road, but sadly, there are too many factors against that. We have to learn to be aware at all times in order to prevent accidents, crashes, and fatalities while behind the wheel. I hate knowing that there could be another little kid sitting in a parking lot, watching their mother lie on the ground in pain. Now that I’ve had my lisence for a while, I’m ususally driving my brother everywhere whether its to school, practice, or events. I force myself to think of this every time time I drive him, because I technically become responsible for his well-being. I know that being a more aware and defensive driver will help prevent an accident from occuring that could potentially threaten my life, my brother’s life, and the lives of other drivers. I’m always reminding myself, in just a matter of seconds, everything can change.