Wait a Minute or Lose Your Life in a Minute

Before I learned to drive, my dad would repeatedly repeat the same phrase to me. The phrase was, “It is better to wait a minute than lose your life in a minute.” I was taught to drive by my father in a Silverado truck about nineteen feet long. I stood at around five feet at this point in my life and could barely see the point of my car. I hated driving that truck, but every day for a whole summer, my father forced me over and over again to get into the truck and practice driving. I started, my turns were too wide, I always forgot to break at speed bumps, and when I managed to brake on time, the whole car would stop, launching my father and me forward. Every day this was the same for two months, I realized that my father was getting agitated. It might be because he was a mechanic in Cuba and drove around a fifty-foot semi-truck for work. I was willing to accept failure and the idea that driving may not be for me. I lost my patience, and this became clear in my driving.

The most important thing that is often overlooked when teaching others how to drive is patience. Loss of patience is what leads to a large number of deaths due to driving. According to the National Institutes of Health, about 260,000 car accidents are caused due to run a red light in the United States. Of these 260,000, 750 of these accidents are fatal. Seven hundred fifty lives were lost due to an absence of patience. A red light sits for only one to two minutes. If people just waited that one minute, a person’s life would not be at risk. Waiting 13 hours could have saved the lives of 750 innocent people. Patience is vital to driving. No matter how big or small the situation may be, whether you are waiting at a red light or stuck in traffic. Drivers believe that honking at individuals, cutting off other drivers, or even crossing a red light will help them reach their destination on time, but it may have the opposite effect.

We, as drivers, are scared when we first begin driving. The fear of touching the wheel for the first time and the shock of how easily it is to make a car go from 0 to 50 mph in seconds. We all experience this excitement and fear, making us scared to be on the road. Growing up in Miami, we have our fair share of bad drivers. Bad does not begin to describe the drivers in Miami; you see something new every day. Waking up in the morning, you see the usual people not using their blinkers, inimical going 15 mph in a 40 mph zone, or the complete opposite, individuals going 40 mph in a 15 mph zone. I have seen it all, even people driving on the opposite side of the road. Making my first-time entering my Dad’s Silverado a memorable emotion.

I started sweating through my palms, bouncing my leg up and down, but deep down, I was excited. I was unable to believe I was about to drive, something that you spent all your life waiting for. When I finally got my license, I felt liberated. This was my opportunity to explore the world ahead of me. My first couple of days, I was terrified to drive alone; my confidence in driving was non-existing, so much that I would drive around noise-free. No music, no podcast, no nothing, not even the sound of the air conditioning, but as time passed, my confidence grew and grew. Entering the second lesson, my Dad taught me when driving, “There is danger in confidence.” And Danger there was; one day after school near the end of my junior year, I was racing to get home after a long school day. On a rainy day, I was wearing my school uniform, a black polo and khaki jeans, with an Ed Sheeran sweater, listening to “Gold Digger” by Kanye West. More than remembering my environment, I remember how my stomach was uneasy about something, but I didn’t know why, while I felt energetic to be home. Driving through the streets, I knew, like the palm of my hand, I thought nothing back could happen, but it did.

I got into my first car accident on streets where I was confident driving in. All my confidence came crashing down when I saw the front of my car. A car that my parent had bought for me, my first car, was ruined. The whole front was smashed, and my bumper looked like it had gone to a compound. The boy that had hit me hit my fair face first. His car was perfectly fine, but mine wasn’t. The accident happened because the boy driver did not wait at a stop sign; he wanted to cut me off before I could pass him. Instead of waiting two minutes for me to pass, he preferred launching his car in front of mine, leading to us both getting into our first accident. In the following weeks, I was a ball of nerves getting into my car, and I still am. I no longer find driving as freeing as I used to. Alongside all these events in my life, I have learned the value confidence and patience play when driving. Patience is something that my generation struggles with. Growing up in the age of technology where everything is a click away, we often forget that, in reality, life is not as easy as clicking a button. Life is full of moments where we have to wait, and in a state of being angered that you have to wait, be grateful that you get to wake up another day. Spend those two minutes at a red light, looking at the road and the surrounding people. Confidence is also a key player when it comes to driving. Never be too confident in your driving; always be safe and double-check if you feel comfortable. It is better to wait a minute than lose your life in a minute.