Most of the lessons in life we learn indirectly during conversations, sharing experiences, and old warnings that we are already quite familiar with. However, those lessons that come abruptly hitting us like a ton of bricks and leaving their traces in our minds forever are a completely different matter. Such was the case with me with a turning point experience, which occurred on 10 August 2024, the day I still vividly remember. 

On a normal North Carolina Saturday morning it was and around 11 AM, my dad, my brother and I were on our way in the family van. Dad was driving my little brother to his baseball game. I was in the car with them just a few minutes earlier and was dropped off at a tennis tournament. It was an average kind of day, the sort of morning when you would never expect any bad things to happen. But everything changed only a moment after I had gotten out. 

A drunk driver came barreling into our family van and hit it head on. 

Thinking about "what if’s is still quite painful. What if I had remained in the car for an extra 5 minutes? What if the tournament timing was a little later? Those questions are even more devastating than I had anticipated. Dad got hurt in the accident and though he made it alive, the sight of him in pain in his shoulder, the burnt left hand or the 12 weeks of concussion related headaches and the continued decline of his cognitive ability, really affected me in a way that I am not even able to put into words. My little brother was totally unscathed, and it’s hard to believe that he was so lucky. Our van, on the other hand, was unrecognizable - the front was all crushed, there were broken things scattered everywhere, the sort of wreck that makes one realize how delicate life is. 

I recently went through driver’s ed at my school and came across several phrases on impaired driving and the importance of sober driving and making wise choices. Leading up to the days before the accident, impaired driving was only an abstract concept I was taught in health lessons and saw on placards: "Don’t drink and drive," "Drive sober," "Make smart choices." I thought it was a warning aimed at other people - strangers on the road, numbers in a video, faces I didn’t know. But when it happened to my family, in the middle of the day, at 11 AM, on a regular weekend, it stopped to be an issue of the abstract. It became personal, human, close, and scary as hell. 

This unfortunate and traumatic accident forced me to radically rethink my understanding of impaired driving, in fact, it made me realize that it’s not only the bad decision of the driver that counts, but the unfortunate domino effect that eventually may reach the people who are completely uninvolved in the accident. Innocent families. Kids on their way to play sports. Parents driving their children to practice and normal people like us and the bystanders who were in the wrong place at the wrong time. 

This accident makes me always think in a different way whenever I am driving or riding with someone. I am more cautious if not scared than before. I understand that things can turn out badly in a snap of a finger. What is more, I see clearly the burden that comes with the driving responsibility. It is not merely a facility - it is a privilege that goes hand in hand with the necessity to take care of both you and those around you. 

Going through something so nearby, something that would have probably turned my life upside down if only the slightest detail had been different, made me realize that impaired driving is not a risk posed to the one who makes the bad decision, but rather that it jeopardizes many more people on the road just going about their normal life. This insight largely determines my current worldview and is the reason why I will always drive sober, keep my conscience about me, and I will neither take safety nor anything else for that matter take for granted. 

Simply because I am now fully aware of what a few seconds can wrench away from you and how fortunate I was that it didn’t take more than ​‍​‌‍​‍‌​‍​‌‍​‍‌that to change my perspective of the perils of impaired driving.