Essay 1

Christian Juarez

McPherson, Gaylene

English: R101

15 September 2014

Car Accident

                      Your heart begins to race and palms begin to sweat as you feel panic flowing through your entire body. We have all seen or hear of these severe automobile accidents that occur. Most of us personally know of somebody that has been through one but yet we believe that one will never occur to us. Most accidents can be prevented if we as drivers focus more on the road and take driving seriously. I had to learn the hard way and has forever changed my driving experience.

I had just received my driver license and was very excited to begin driving. My first year of driving went excellent, I didn’t crash nor did anybody crash into me. I was very cautious while driving always respected the signs and would always try and be aware of my surroundings. As time went by and I drove around with my friends, there bad driving kind of rubbed off on me. My good driving habits were beginning to fly out the door. Seeing how my friends drove, sort of in a way influenced me in the way I should drive. While driving, I would be distracted looking at my phone or found myself speeding a times. One of the things I would do the most is tailgate other drivers. While driving, I never really found myself in a hurry when I was traveling from point A to point B, it was just I never liked being behind slow drivers. What I found worked was to tailgate them to try and make them speed up a bit, which I found worked at times. That bad habit of tailgating other drivers will soon come back to haunt me.

          It was a cold sunny day in January when my driving experience will forever change. It was an early Thursday morning and I was heading to my sister’s house. I had been in Santa Paula since the AM taking care of some business and once I finished it was off to my sister’s home. As I was leaving Santa Paula, I noticed there was no traffic and everything was flowing smoothly. As I entered the freeway, I escalated my speed to be at the current traffic speed. Everything seemed fine, until I saw from a far that I was catching up to a red SUV truck. As I got closer to the truck I began to tailgate it to try and make the person go faster. Changing lanes was not an option, because right next to the SUV was another car. They were going approximately around the same speed, so I was stuck behind them.

As I continued to tailgate the driver, the person driving wouldn’t increase speed. About five minutes into the tailgating, the person in the SUV suddenly hits the brakes. I didn’t know this until later but in front of the SUV was another car that I couldn’t see thus the reason the truck couldn’t speed up. The smaller car in front of the SUV hit the brakes first then the SUV and I was behind the SUV. Two choices had to be made, either hit the truck in front of me or crash into the metal fence that was on my right, that are on freeways to separate the directions in which traffic is flowing. In the little time I had to react, I quickly jerked the steering wheel to the right, into the fence. I couldn’t just slam the brakes because doing so would make my car spin out of control. Thinking to myself, I thought maybe if I gently begin to brake and while scraping the side of my car on the fence will make the car slow down to a complete stop. As my car began rubbing against the fence, I can see from the corner of my eye orange sparks flying out all over the place. Something of my car got caught in the rusty metal fence making the car begin to tip over.

By the time the car was beginning to tip over the speed was very low but still a scary situation. The car ended up flipping over on to some bushes and came to a complete halt. As I opened eyes and look into my rear view mirror and see I have blood dripping from my cheek on to the roof of the car. It wasn’t severe but at the moment it was a horrific sight to witness. I was in the car for about ten minutes when from a far I begin to hear sirens. The sirens become closer and closer until I hear them right next to me.  A fire man helped me crawl out of the car and into the open. Ambulance soon arrive to the scene to check up on me. They clean my face up from all the blood I had and told me I was going to have to go with them to the hospital to get checked out to make sure there is no internal bleeding going on. So I ride with them to the Hospital and get checked out. I was in the hospital for about one hour when the doctor told me I was fine and I was free to go.

          Since that day, my old habits of driving are out of the picture. I realized although I was okay and nothing happened to me, it could have been a lot worse. I was lucky to only come out of that accident with only a cut on my face, as I hear of other accidents where drivers come out ten times more worse than me. I began taking driving more seriously and know drive very cautiously. No more tailgating other drivers and no more distractions for me. Driving is something not to take for granted. Obey the signs that are in the roads as well as the traffic laws. We should all drive intelligently not brainless.