Why I Don't Like Driving

I only started driving about a month ago, mostly because even my parents felt it was time for this layabout eighteen-year-old to get her license. It's not as if I didn't want my license. I just kept telling myself I was too busy to study for the test, that I could always take it later. And later. And later.

I didn't get my permit until only about a month before I graduated from high school. I drove to school with my mother in the passenger seat, warily avoiding the crazy morning rush. I got my license over the summer after employing some rather devious means of preparing for the driving test. I should have been excited with this new-found freedom. But I wasn't. Not really.

First off, I didn't have access to a car. All I'd really done was commandeer my father's car on the days he worked from home. When he was at work, well, I was stuck. Second, I didn't have insurance for almost a month, which pretty much nixed it all. Third, I really had no place to go. I wasn't allowed on the freeways. I had virtually no friends left in town, no really cool place around that I desperately needed to get to. I really had nothing to do except maybe drive to the library and bum about for a bit there.

I'd say that these are all pretty solid reasons for not driving, but they don't really explain why I don't like to drive.

To be honest, I'm terrified of driving.

A while ago, my mother was hit by a car backing out of its parking stall at our local Wal-Mart. It was going what, ten miles an hour at most? It scared the living daylights out of me. My mother had been hit by a car. The physical repercussions of that incident lasted a while for her, and I wondered: If ten miles an hour can do that, what would happen if I hit someone while going twenty-five? Forty? Sixty?

I don't like driving because I'm scared I'm going to do something stupid like reach over to my phone and think: Oh, I'm only going to change the song that's playing. No big deal. But then it is. I'm scared I'll misjudge the distance to the crosswalk and stomp on the brakes a little too late because I was distracted by what's come up over the radio. I'm scared that one day, I'll get too lazy about turn signals, and I'll just ease over into the next lane without even bothering to glance at my mirrors and see the biker on my shoulder.

Yes. I'm scared.

Maybe it's because I'm inexperienced. Maybe it's because I have terrible dreams. Or maybe it's just because I have a deep character flaw that has yet to see the light of day.

Maybe it's all of that.

All I know is that I'm scared.

And I'd rather be scared than sorry.