Picking up the Pieces

Picking up the Pieces

In America, an average of 34,000 people die each year because of driving. The estimated population of Wyoming County, where I grew up, was 40,491 people in 2021. Think about how many people that truly is because that’s only wiping out one entire county in one year. What if we compiled ten years, fives, even two years – that’s an impact. An impact on your lost opportunities, your family and friends, the ones that you didn’t even know that needed you, or the ones that attempted to save you.

No doubt family and friends mourn over each one of those deaths but think about Les Brown’s quote “The graveyard is the richest place on earth, because it is here that you will find all the hopes and dreams that were never fulfilled, the books that were never written, the songs that were never sung, the inventions that were never shared, the cures that were never discovered, all because someone was too afraid to take that first step, keep with the problem, or determined to carry out their dream” or the time that they thought they had that was taken away too soon and maybe it was due to a motor vehicle accident. Maybe it was preventable, maybe not but without the proper educational training who knows.

Yet you weren’t afraid to engage in actions that lessoned your strengths of being a adequate driver despite knowing it’s one of the most detrimental risks in today’s society.

Have you ever not practiced what you preached? Like maybe been bothered by someone driving and texting, confronting them and then went and did it anyway. Practice what you preach. Just do the right thing. Is it really that hard?

It can be hard. We are human and despite knowing what the right thing is we still have temptations and sometimes a sense of “it won’t happen to me”. We all need to remember that we aren’t invisible, and it can happen to us. It can happen to anyone.

Being in the car, tends to be when my ideas flow. Without conscious, at times I begin to pick up my phone to create a list or a self-reminder. I am working on making a conscious effort to put my phone down as soon as I am aware of my choice or sometimes, I purposely leave it in an inconvenient spot so that it’s out of reach. Maybe you should try this too. Are you fearful of missing something urgent or important on that phone? Wouldn’t being a little late mean so much if it didn’t mean that you were going to miss everything for the rest of your life because of a choice YOU made.

I have been in two car accidents. Same intersection, different collider. The first time I was the passenger of the car that got T-boned. The other person didn’t stop at his stop sign. The second time I was the driver, and the other driver didn’t properly plan for the weather condition and slid through the intersection. At the time, we were housing a foreign exchange student and language barriers can be an obstacle. Ensuring proper treatment is imperative, meaning adequate communication is needed but maybe with the right education the whole situation could have been prevented.

Still don’t think driving education is important… Join your local fire department, you’ll be more likely to want to be an educated driver, want to reduce accidents, and improve on your driving decisions. Tragedies happen daily but I’ll never forget two parents going through a divorce, one of them getting in an accident, they had two children, and after the accident sitting in the back of an ambulance with the father and one child while the other didn’t yet know what had happened to their sibling.

Living for something bigger than yourself is the number one step that you can embody to work towards being a safer driver. When we live with an “all about me” motto we don’t care about others and are more apt to be selfish and reckless decisions. Yet when we show up with empathy and passion for others, we want to do the right thing and we are more apt to make safer, wiser, and more educated decisions.

Take an accident prevention workshop – typically you get a discount on your insurance premium. You benefit, society benefits if you’re willing to implement the safe approaches discussed. You my as well, you are already there. Make the best of it!

Driver’s education benefits your employer too. It saves businesses from damages and liabilities that are prevented due to you receiving road safety education and the proper training. Reliability is huge in the workforce.

At the end of the day, we can pick up damaged car parts, but we can’t always put all your pieces together.

Being in the volunteer fie department, for over ten years, I tell my dad that I’d much rather be the person that dies rather than living knowing that I killed someone especially if I knew I could have implemented the “right” things.