From someone who has been in one-too-many car accidents, driving is terrifying. Maybe my fear of cars stems from something other than being the victim of someone else's choice to not watch the road ahead. Regardless, I have a fear that some would call irrational, about driving and riding in cars.

Riding in a car doesn't make me afraid. It is watching other cars on the road and knowing that I cannot control the actions of those drivers that scares me. I cannot even control the actions of the driver driving me, but I extend trust to that individual. The thing that scares me about driving is that people think that they are invincible.

A lot of people are reckless because they figure that anything bad that could possibly happen will happen to someone else. Unfortunately, this is not true. We are all victims of a world where the general consensus is that we are incapable of being killed or injured from anything: diseases to daily rituals to once-in-a-lifetime activities. That mindset is dangerous not only for ourselves, but to those around us. We may think that driving up the road at 40MPH on a road where the speed limit is 30MPH is not a big deal. Well, it is. Most of the time, nothing bad will happen, but other times, you could be responsible for killing other people, injuring them, destroying lives. It is not just your life that is affected by the choices you make.

When I drive, I take the lives of other people on the road seriously. How can I live knowing that I chose to do something reckless that caused somebody to die? Any person with an ounce of humanity, compassion, or sense of accountability would not be able to live happily with the knowledge that they hurt someone.

Why am I scared of driving? Well, as I said, I am scared because while I have control over my car and the person driving me (to an extent), I have no possible way of knowing the environment surrounding each other driver on the road or controlling the choices of those drivers. I have to put my safety and life in the hands of other drivers who have the ability to drive recklessly. This is why I am afraid of driving. I know that I'm not the only one who has this fear. For the sake of all of us, don't drive recklessly. It isn't just me who is affected. It is everyone.