Okay, so...I'm a Bad Driver

To quote Twenty One Pilots, “I’ve been thinking too much…help me…”

Only, categorically, I’ve discovered I’m not the one who needs help. Or rather, not the only one. We all need help. And we all need to think MORE, not less.

I’m a bad driver. I’m just going to come out and say it.

People are uncomfortable riding with me because I go too fast, I barely obey the rules of the road if I don’t feel like it in that moment, yet routinely yell and wag my finger at the other bad drivers on the road about how much they suck at this driving thing. Sometimes I do the exact opposite of all of this and drive slow because I’m too busy doing whatever it is I do in the car that isn’t focusing on driving. Yet, here I must interject and add a qualifier to the statement above where I called myself a bad driver…

When I focus on driving—when the stakes are high enough for my adrenaline fix—I suddenly am capable of being Lettie from Fast and the Furious.

Only, something else happens when the stakes are higher. I start to think about human lives, and the collateral damage all too impacted by bad drivers. I have an aunt who basically stopped living after one too many not-her-fault-accidents damaged her neck so bad her life is one step after another of pain. I know people who have died or otherwise been seriously maimed because of car accidents.

Texting, talking, eating, smoking, changing music, dancing, bopping, drinking coffee, avoiding spiders that are crawling across your ceiling (it happened just today! I pulled over…), or daydreaming…these are all things we all do and these are all things that can cause a lot of pain, agony, and death. I know awesome drivers—people who can do amazing things in cars—but being able to be a jackass on the road, not aware or respecting the lives of the people on the road with you…all driving merit you once had should probably now be stripped.

We really all are homicidal maniacs masquerading as nice people. If you don’t believe me, pay attention to everything you do and say the next time you get into the car. Our collective anger is like a reflective depth pool of poisonous individual anger. It drives such subconscious entitlement, rage, and fear that we relish getting behind the wheel of 3,000 ton weapons of mass destruction. In fact, we operate them like battle tanks on the front lines of take-no-prisoners war. And we make a game of it too, and too many of us drive around competing on who can be the bigger badass (read: someone who needs a more fulfilling life).

If you’ve been reading, you know my Mom and I drove to Wyoming and back. We saw, experienced, and survived some of the most fascinating and/or shocking examples of disrespectful human behavior I have ever seen. From people behind the wheels of massive trucks-no-one-needs who do whatever they want just because they can, to people who make it dangerous for everyone by driving slower than moving traffic in the left lane and boxing people in next to semi-trucks in high wind, to drivers of semi-trucks hauling massive loads who are racing and weaving through traffic down a 10,000 peak summit with no regard for inclement weather, other cars, or basic physics having to do with weight, speed, and outside forces…

Well, as you can tell, it was a very scary and illuminating experience. When I came back, I really started paying attention more to my own behind-the-wheel behavior.

Though absolutely capable of being an extremely good driver, most of the time I’m not. I'm a beautiful road raging jackass who thinks my special snowflake destination is more important than your life. Or the lives of your children.

I took a break from my car today for a few different reasons. Walking home my block to the bus stop, I was talking to a neighbor who lives in the complex down the road. She walks all the time. She is an elderly black woman, and she walks come rain or shine up and down to do the things it takes to live her life. She is fit and she is absolutely fabulous. The following are facts from our conversation:

1. Years ago she had been attacked, followed, and road raged after by a white man in a truck at a shopping center, and after she was able to escape to safety and get over the shock and trauma, she sold her car at an auction and hasn’t driven since;

2. In the years she has been walking, she has seen all kinds of people, for all kinds of reasons, use their cars as weapons that maim and murder the lives around them;

3. Including a truck barreling through a light and hitting an elderly pedestrian with a walker so hard that she flipped into the back of his truck—dead on impact.

In a world full of people who will vote for Donald Trump just to keep the “baby killers” from getting safe abortions, you sure would think we all could care a bit more about the lives who are already right next to us, living it the best they can.

’Til next time. For now, be well.