Blue Plush Seats

by A. G., Brookline, MA

Finals were over. I felt free. My class and I were going to an amusement park. I couldn't wait for the fun that lay ahead. And then something happened that made me think.

While we were on the highway, we were slowed by an accident. At first I thought it was just a routine dent-in-the-car kind of thing. Maybe a slightly bigger smash-up. Perhaps a broken leg or two. But it wasn't.

As we got closer, I saw a police car driving on the other side, against traffic. Then I saw two helicopters (to rush injured people to the hospital), several tow trucks, some ambulances, two or three firetrucks, and the really horrible part: one car, flipped over on its back and a second car, completely smashed against the railing in the middle of the highway, with two dark blue plush seats hanging out of it. That second car could have been any piece of junk metal. It was hard to tell that it was a car. Then I saw where I guess a third car had been. I couldn't even see the car. All I saw were 20 firemen and paramedics, trying to get an injured person out of a crushed car.

As we sped by in our bright yellow school bus, I couldn't help but think that no more than half an hour ago, several people were driving down the highway, sitting on blue plush seats, enjoying life. These people had no idea that their lives might end that day.

I cannot say for sure whether the victims of the crash died, or were paralyzed for life. The point I am making is that most probably several very ordinary Americans were killed today while seated voluntarily in a hunk of metal on rubber tires propelled forward (at many miles per hour) by the burning of fuel.

And people in California or western Massachusetts won't have heard that on June 15, 1993, several innocent people were killed by many tons of metal flying down a highway at 65 miles an hour (or more). Because this happens every day.

This boggles my mind. I know that even after having seen this horrible accident, and having written these words, tomorrow morning, I will have no trouble stepping into a car. I know that I look anxiously to the day when I will be allowed to drive a car. Even though I know that every time I get into a car I am risking my life, I risk my life without fear.

Go figure. And drive safely. It's bad enough that people die all the time from accidents that have no obvious cause. Let's not raise our chances of dying in a car accident: don't drink and drive.