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| .Volume 2, Number 3 |
July, 2001 |
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 One of life’s more sobering safety lessons should happen to everyone who gets behind the wheel of a motorized vehicle and takes it on the road - teaching your teenager to drive!
Thus, I felt totally capable of teaching my 17-year-old to drive: after forty years of driving, how hard can it be? Well. Driving with your teenager for the first time is maybe the biggest reality check you’re likely to encounter because all of a sudden, the activity you’ve learned to take for granted and perform almost by rote changes. You notice every slight gyration of the vehicle, every "California" stop, every missed turn signal, every time the eyes behind the wheel are not paying complete attention to the road, every time the speedometer slips a bit above the posted limit:: every time, in short, that your child commits the same driving sins you probably commit every day. The difference is this: you are brought to the uncomfortable realization that all these tiny infractions of the rules of safe driving add up to a new awareness of your own irresponsibility with a 2-ton machine that can kill people. A machine for which you have paid the better part of two years’ worth of a college education, and the operation - or mis-operation - of which can cost you your license, your mobility, your life, or worst of all, someone else’s life. Boy, do I pay attention to what I’m doing behind the wheel now; first of all, as an example to my daughter and second, because driving with her has reminded me that you’re never so good that you can take safety for granted. |
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1 When the shoe's on the other foot Page 2 Page 3 PAGE 4 Archives |
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Forty
years ago this very summer I got my learner’s permit from the State of
Indiana and from that moment on, the road was mine. I became the world’s
most critical driver with respect to everyone else and the world’s
most self-confident driver with respect to myself. That summer marked
the end of my mother’s autonomy: she surrendered the keys and I drove
everywhere. And, apart from a few minor mishaps - a speeding ticket here
and there, and one for failing to carry proof of insurance, and a small
wreck that was not my fault, I’ve been a pretty good Highway Citizen.