Name: Diamond Coleman
From: South , Indiana
Votes: 0
Diamond
Coleman
When
I became a teenager I was very aware that learning to drive would be
the next stepping stone in my life; but I was terrified. I feared of
having so much control over something that could kill someone else at
any given moment. I put off learning how to drive when I was 14, 15,
and 16, I believed at that time that I would lose my life because of
all of the car accidents that I have heard about and witnessed. Of
course there are precautions to car accidents but my mind was set on
all of the negatives. When I was a young girl, I remember being at
home with my father and brother, eating dinner while my mom was on
her way to class at IUSB. My father got a call and we instantly had
to get in the car and leave. I didn’t understand what was going on
but I was afraid because I knew that my mom was hurt; I was later
told that she was hit by a drunk driver. Being a kid, I cried
uncontrollably, I thought I would never see my mother again. A few
days later I remember her coming home with a neck brace and scratches
and bruises, fast forward about 10 years later, I witnessed her go
through another traumatic accident. As she was leaving work, me, my
grandmother, and sister following her in another car, she pulled out
of the parking lot and off she went, within seconds someone crashed
into her. I watched her being pulled onto a stretcher and her pain
seemed unbearable. When she was released from the hospital, she did
not know what had happened, she also had a deep cut on her finger and
had no idea how it got there. From this moment on, driving was
something that I never wanted to do. In drivers ed, many things
such as drunk driving, safety, speed limits, etc are taught, many
people do not abide by these guidelines which is the reason why my
mom was caught up in horrible accidents. So many deaths can be
prevented if people just follow the drivers ed policies. During
high school, driving became something that I needed to do because I
was so busy. I finally was okay with it and learned from my mom and
dad how to do everything correctly. Today, I have my license and I am
overly cautious about how I drive, I do not want to be the one to put
someone in the position that my mother was in multiple times and vice
versa.
