One of the reasons I started this blog is because although I think of myself as a positive person, I sometimes get bogged down in complaining and whining. Sometimes it is for work, sometimes it is for laughs and sometimes it just comes out without me realizing it. 

So, as I was thinking about things I could do to change my way of thinking, I decided maybe I should try to look at the things I complain about most and find reasons to appreciate them, or at the very least understand their role in our lives. 

My first topic is one that effects most people almost every day…bad drivers! On my way to work each day, I travel down a four-lane road that is about the size of a two-lane road. It is very busy and is usually clogged with school or vacation traffic. People hold up traffic to make left turns against equally busy traffic, and the impatient drivers weaving in and out of the other cars make it a dangerous situation for everyone. 

I’ve seriously contemplated how many minutes of my life have been taken off because of the stress of this daily drive. But, no matter the road, there are drivers who test my patience. I will admit to having road raged a few times. Why can’t everyone just drive like me??

Except.. my confession is that I have fallen into the ranks of bad drivers. Almost every driving sin that bothers me, I am also guilty of at some point or another. Like most bad behavior, I think the purpose of bad drivers is to act as a mirror for our own behavior. I will never, to my chagrin, be able to control the other drivers on the road. But, realizing the danger and stupidity of the person tailgating me or weaving through traffic, helps me to see what I can do. I think watching other people do dangerous things on the road has helped me more than even my *ahem* defensive driving class taught me. Being annoyed by reckless drivers is a good reminder of what not to do. 

Also, a bonus “The bright side of..”.. Another driving confession of mine,  is that I used to be a chronic speeder. One night, I had out-of-town visitors and wanted to get home quickly, so without really thinking I was driving 50 in a 35 zone. I was the only car on the road, or so I thought, until the blue lights started flashing. I was given a ticket and court date, and I went on my way cursing at all way home. 

Because this wasn’t my first ticket, I was worried about what was going to happen to my insurance. I started driving like a saint, or at the very least not speeding. I could not afford to get another speeding ticket. On my way home on I-95 from visiting Carlton in Greenville, I let my cat sleep on my lap. She normally sleeps 23 hours a day, and we’d made this drive before with no problems. However, this was a mistake,  although people drive with their pets free in the car every day.  

When I was nearly home, my cat started acting agitated. She began crawling on my lap, which would have been fine, except in an attempt to look out the window, her paw hit the automatic window button and it started rolling down. I panicked, jerked her off my lap and consequently lost control of my vehicle. Even writing this a year later is difficult for me because it was the most frightening 30 seconds of my life. My car spun out of control, hitting one guard rail and then the other. A lot of what happened was fuzzy, and I don’t know how long i was stopped in the middle of the road before a man stopped to help. I was hysterical. 

Looking back, I am grateful for a lot of things. I wasn’t hit by any other drivers and didn’t hit another else, which is a miracle in itself. Several people stopped and helped me, including a woman who offered to drive me and my cat home and to the hospital. (I live far away from anyone I could have called to do this for me. The kindness of strangers is one of life’s most beautiful things, in my opinion.) My cat, although shaken up, was safe. She had been thrown to the back seat during the whole thing. My car, a honda civic, was equipped with a lot of safety features that helped sustain the impact.

But, most of all, I’m thankful that I had gotten that ticket a few weeks earlier. If it weren’t for that, I might have been going 10 or 15 mph faster than I actually was, and I can’t imagine the same outcome if I had been speeding. Because I was so speeding conscious from that ticket, I was driving below the 70 mph speed limit, and I credit that every day for keeping me safe. Miraculously, despite a few bumps and bruises and driving anxiety, I was unharmed. 

These were my airbag and seat belt burns. The man from the insurance company said that without the side airbags, my head would have gone through the window. Not very comforting, but a good advertisement for Honda Civics.

I would like to use myself as an example of a bad driver for anyone who thinks that they don’t need to be cautious. You may be a perfect driver, but you never know when you might have a driver like me in front of you, and what I learned from my accident is that things happen in a split second. You have to prepare for accidents before they happen, because  you can’t stop it once it has started. 

So, the bright side of bad drivers.. is to give examples of how NOT to drive, and to serve as a reminder to control what we can on the road since you never know what the cars around you are going to do.