Driving as a Societal Dance

Miriam
Zuo

In
the picture, my dad’s Honda Pilot is mangled beyond any hope of
repair, glass shattered and bumper crumpled, as if a giant had tried
to crush a can. He’s not looking much better, with a myriad of
scrapes and a limp that takes months of physical therapy to sort out.
“I blacked out for a second, and when I came to, I wasn’t sure
if I was still alive,” he explains.

In
avoiding a piece of debris on the highway, he switched into the lane
of a speeding eighteen-wheeler, which tried valiantly but could not
brake in time. I suppose my dad was deeply lucky in not becoming one
of the over thirty-seven thousand motor vehicle deaths that year in
the US, but I’m struck by how the accident, though technically
not
his fault, was more so a product of what he forgot to do than of what
he did right.

Yes,
he had checked his mirrors. Yes, he had signaled and switched lanes
without slowing down. And yes, he had been following the speed limit.
But that had only shifted the brunt of the expenses away from him,
not the accident itself. Had he been more aware of the cars on either
side of him, he told me, he could have avoided putting himself in
that situation.

Responsible
driving goes beyond keeping alcohol and iMessage far away from the
steering wheel. It means conscientious monitoring of not just your
own driving, but also of other drivers – even if years on the road
have desensitized you to the dangers that can arise from moving four
thousand pounds of rubber and metal at sixty miles per hour.
Sometimes people forget to turn on their lights; sometimes they skid
on icy roads; sometimes they’re not in a state to drive; and
sometimes they’re just new to being behind the wheel. But by sharing
the road with these often well-meaning drivers, you are responsible
for keeping yourself safe.

That’s
why I think defensive driving practices deserve stronger emphasis,
particularly when teenagers learn how to drive. When we’re in the car
together, my mom, who receives defensive driving training every year,
never fails to remind me to maintain a comfortable distance from the
car in front of us and to stay conscious of the car behind us. She
prompts me to drive slower when it’s raining, enough times that
slowing down has become an ingrained habit. When I’m driving, I check
in with myself periodically, making sure that I haven’t slipped into
autopilot and that I’m driving defensively. And when I’m in the
passenger seats of other cars, in channeling my mom’s calm energy, I
refrain from pressuring my friends to cut corners, no matter how late
we might be.

Even
if you’re alone in the car, driving is not an individual activity.
It’s more of a dance, tempo constantly changing as people weave
along a black ribbon: to make it work, you’ve got to pay attention
to your partners.