Caution on the Side of Erring

”You drive, but you can’t drive like a grandmother.”

Perception is an interesting thing. My driving has always scared my parents and my aunts. I drive like a “hotrodder”, I make dangerous turns, and generally add to the “wear and tear” of the car by not watching the bumps. My friends on the other hand think I drive too slow, hesitate too often in making a turn when oncoming traffic is still far away, and generally sit too rigidly with my hands at “ten o’clock and two o’clock.” I’m not sure which portrait is accurate, nor am I the best one to judge. When I’m alone, my mind is usually on the music I’m listening to, going over a checklist of things to do at work, or mentally composing blog entries.

I made it through my first few years driving without getting a ticket. I had one scare in my early twenties when a girlfriend leaned over to hug me and made me swerve on the expressway. This didn’t go unnoticed by a pair of officers in an unmarked van, and when lights hidden in their radiator grill flashed to life as a siren blared, I knew I was done for. I was nervous and stammering my life story, and she was shivering in a wet bathing suit since we’d just come from a water park, so ultimately they let us go with just a warning. I was well into my late twenties and working for my current job when I got my one and only speeding ticket. The area where my office is located has a strict 30 M.P.H. rule, unmarked by any signs but strongly enforced, mostly by officers in unmarked cars. Plenty of people have been pulled over from my job, and it was only a matter of time before I was too. Ever since then I’ve been extra careful to stay as close to the limit as possible in that city.

Last year I experienced not only my first car accident, but my second as well within the span of a month. First a van hit us while my dad was driving, spinning us 180 degrees in an intersection and demolishing the back end of his car. Had I not seen it barreling down on us and called out a warning, he wouldn’t have floored it and it would have struck the passenger side door, killing or severely injuring me. At the time I was also going through some weird dizzy spells while driving, possibly stress-induced, and that’s why my dad was behind the wheel that day. A month later, driving to work in my own car one morning, recovering from my spells, I heard a horrible squealing sound at a red light and looked in my rearview mirror just in time to see a car crash into me. Miraculously, her car took more damage than mine.

Neither accident seemed to affect me all that much psychologically, nor make the other problem I was going through any worse. In time I got to a place where I didn’t even think about it, and driving became the normal event free daily tedium that it should be. These are all things I’ve written about before, of course, and things I’m sure I’ll reference in the future. As for today, when I volunteered to drive my friends at lunch and received an admonishment not to drive like an elderly woman, it was not without some pressure. Every time one of them would comment on how I was driving, I’d floor the pedal a little more, or take a turn a little sharper, to compensate. Every time I did so however, ghosts of the past would offer warnings of their own. What if a cop was around the corner? What if some animal ran in front of me? What if someone ran a stop sign? What if I hit a bump or pothole and damaged my old car? Things that have happened to me, and things that nearly happened to me, dueled with the present words of my peers. People in their thirties perceive my driving quite differently from people in their sixties and seventies. And when one shouted, “GO! Now!” to spur me to make a left turn in front of oncoming traffic, I instead froze and slammed on the brake, missed my window of opportunity, and became more nervous.

Of course with me behind the wheel, we got back later than any of us cared to get back. As I waited at a traffic light across from our office, I noticed arrows in the road allowing for left turns and right turns, but not driving straight across. I commented as much, and my friends agreed that there didn’t seem to be any reason not to drive straight across and into the entrance to our parking lot once the light was green. Someone made a joke about my luck, and something inevitably and improbably going wrong. Another commented that I wouldn’t do it, and would instead turn and drive up the road to an entrance further down. I noted the line of cars waiting at a railroad crossing, blocking the way to that other entrance, and looked at the one fifty feet ahead of me. The light turned green. I gunned it.

It was wonderful and liberating. In many areas of life I err on the side of caution to the point of complete apathy and inactivity, and lose out because of it. This time I seized an opening, and nothing had gone wrong. I was on top of the world, and as I turned into the first aisle to find a parking space, a voice shouted, “Whoa! Whoa! Nononno!!!” Too late, I braked as I saw one of our maintenance guys in my rearview mirror waving his arms frantically. Nearby were some traffic cones, and some workers with a phone line stretched across the pavement, cable I’d just driven over. I was now stopped, and rolling down my window as a reflex, as though a police officer would approach. One of my friends shouted, “what are you doing?!” and snapped me back to reality. Sheepishly, I rolled the window back up and pulled into the first available parking space. As my buddies headed in laughing at my luck, I looked over at the workers, where our maintenance guy was just standing, glaring at me. I mumbled a barely audible apology, hung my head, and followed my friends to our building.

Hesitation can cause accidents. Jumping the gun foolishly can do the same. With my reflexes though, I’m probably better off with the hesitation, since by the time the shouting registered, I’d already ridden over their cable. Maybe it’s not about the two opposite extreme driving tendencies I exhibit depending upon who’s with me. Improbability is my constant companion, and will always determine the outcome of every situation.