The Aftermath

It is hot that day, very hot. Emanuele looks around, tired from the summer heat, and tries to remember which way is the fastest to go home from the university. There is not a soul around: during summer the residential areas of the cities empty out because it is vacation time. And even for him, who had given his final exam that morning, it was finally time to go on vacation. Emanuele wipes away a drop of sweat slipping on his forehead, puts on his helmet, and gets on his motorcycle. I wonder what he was thinking about during his journey home, perhaps he felt satisfaction and relief for the exam he had just finished or was more projected towards the well-deserved vacation he had so long been waiting for. Unfortunately, I will never know. He stops at the traffic light, and looks impatiently at the red light, waiting for it to turn green so he can go home and escape from that suffocating heat; the traffic light goes off, and Emanuele leaves, looking straight ahead. He does not notice the car speeding up to his right. He does not notice the screams, the impact. He doesn’t realize that he falls helpless to the ground and hits his head. He doesn’t notice any of these things, because for Emanuele, from that moment and forever, there is only darkness.

Emanuele, my relative and friend, remained in a coma in the summer of 2016, following a road accident: behind the wheel of a car, the driver was looking at his cell phone, not paying attention to the road in front of him. Emanuele doesn’t give up immediately, remaining in a coma for a while; he comes out of that accident without a scratch and appears like a statue to those who visit him: motionless, unscathed, and unconscious. However, in the end, he decides to leave us. “Don’t text and drive”. We hear this slogan all the time, it is repeated to us like a mantra, and we still don’t understand its importance; perhaps, precisely because we hear the same indications for safe driving so frequently, we got numb, and don’t understand how important Drivers Education really is. We think we are invincible, that these things only happen to others, until they happen to us. Receiving a driving education is vital, in every sense of the word: it makes the difference between life and death. It shows us safe driving, educates us on the dangers of the road, and reminds us how much responsibility we have when we get behind the wheel.

The last point, in my opinion, is also the most essential: since driving is a daily activity, we sometimes forget how easily it can change our lives forever. When confronted with the aftermath of irresponsible driving, we immediately realize how much an action that seems trivial to us, can instead be extremely dangerous. And despite everything, Drivers Education is not even mandatory in some states of the US. To reduce deaths caused by road accidents, perhaps we should make the consequences clearer, and get away from the rhetoric that makes us numb, to adopt a more real approach; we should make survivors of road accidents talk, family members who have lost someone close to them, we should understand that we are not invincible, let alone immortal. We need to see beyond slogans and advertising campaigns, we need to talk to the people who have been through it and listen to them, allowing us to get back down to earth.

For my part, to become a better and safer driver, when I start driving, I try to be aware of everything that is happening around me, and I know that there can be no distractions. This is why if I’m not in the right conditions (physical or psychological) to be able to drive, then I simply don’t do it, and I look for an alternative, perhaps moving by public transport, or if possible on foot. Obviously, this can cause complications during the day, and it’s not the simplest solution at all, but I would rather be a little annoyed, rather than take risks.

Many years have passed, but sometimes I still think about Emanuele; I distinctly remember a spring day when the whole family had gathered for a Sunday lunch. He laid down on the lawn in the garden, closed his eyes, and said: “I am a flower”. Every spring, as soon as the first wildflowers bloom and the petals fill the streets, I think of him. I remember that boy lying on the grass, carefree sunbathing. And every time I think of him, I do not understand what happened, I can’t explain how it is possible that he is no longer here. I wanted to tell Emanuele’s story because my family is still dealing with the aftermath of his incident, but there are thousands of stories like his, and we need to hear them so that we don’t repeat the same mistakes.