Defensive Driving

Trust your instinct to the end, though you can render no reason.

~Ralph Waldo Emerson

It was a usual quiet weekday morning. I was watching the news while drinking my coffee before getting ready for work. As always, the news was filled with the latest accidents and criminal activity, most of which I ignored. However, one particular traffic accident caught my full attention.

A vehicle had run a red light and T-boned another vehicle. As I watched the replay of this accident, I thought to myself, What could the driver have done to lessen the impact of being hit broadside like that? I visualized that a sharp turn of the steering wheel might have helped.

Not thinking much more about it, I finished my coffee and got ready for work. I headed out the door for my twenty-two-mile drive to work. As I approached the intersection that I had traveled through countless times before, I saw out of the corner of my eye that a black SUV on my left was not slowing down to stop at the stop sign. It was actually speeding toward me…

I was now living the exact scenario that I had played out in my mind less than an hour earlier. So, I did exactly what I had planned and cut the wheel sharply to the right. I was not able to avoid the accident and the SUV did hit my car. It tumbled down the road before it came to a stop. Somehow though, my car ended up in the grass on the other side of the road. To my amazement, after what had just happened, I was completely unharmed.

I believe with all my heart that I watched the news that morning for a reason. I don’t think that I would have reacted as quickly as I did if I had not been through that practice run in my mind first.

— Bonnie Collins Wood —