According to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, there are 254 million passenger vehicles registered in the United States, making it likely that you’ll be in a car accident at some time in your life. Having driven for ten years, I myself have been in five accidents, which I hope satisfies my lifetime quota. Granted, two of the mishaps were before I was 15, so I am unsure whether they count. One came before kindergarten, so I know that one doesn’t count. It came before I could reach the pedals or read the owner’s manual.
I caused my first car accident when I was 2 years old.
That’s what Mom says, at least. She contends that I wanted to take her cerulean 1980 Monte Carlo out for a spin while she fetched my older brother Bo from his after-school caretaker. Alas, my attempt to wield the two-ton baby was ill-fated: after I somehow got it in gear, my toddler-aged appendages were nowhere near long enough to reach the brake pedal. Thus, the car lurched forward, thumping the babysitter’s automobile parked in front of it. Because Big Blue was only rolling in neutral, neither the cars nor the diapered driver suffered any serious damage. Though Mom didn’t witness the event firsthand, when she and the babysitter rushed outside after hearing Big Blue smash into the babysitter’s car, they found me standing behind the steering wheel, unharmed and honking the horn. Incidentally, Cosco, Graco, Evenflo, Recaro, and the rest of the players of the car-seat industry have made tremendous strides in child-restraint technology in the last twenty-five years. I bet kids can’t escape from their car seats so easily anymore—I hope not, at least.
Excepting the car-seat maker’s shoddy workmanship, this little tale of automotive woe is innocuous, maybe one that I will tell my son or daughter someday. In any event, I wasn’t held accountable for my imitative actions, and although I caused my mother much grief with the babysitter (a trend that would persist until my parents finally gave up on hiring caretakers for me at age 9), I did not endure any punishment for my first fender-bender.
Nine years later, Bo forced me into a car accident. We were returning from the home of my aunt, who had commissioned Bo to feed her border collie while she was away on vacation. In true 18-year-old fashion, my brother completely forgot about this responsibility until the penultimate day of my aunt’s return. Thus, he and I hastily drove over to Aunt Kippy’s house, where we poured a week’s worth of Kibbles ‘n Bits into Sarah’s bowl. Underfed dog now overstuffed, we started back from Aunt Kippy’s toward our home on Sans Souci Way. We spent the fifteen-minute trip back to the house listening to House of Pain—something I especially enjoyed because of Everlast’s and Danny Boy’s predilection for four-letter words. After turning onto Sans Souci Way, Bo stopped the car, lowered the volume on “Shamrocks and Shenanigans,” and looked at me.
“OK, Michael. You’re going to drive now.”
“You mean like steer? I’m not gonna do that. That’s for little kids,” I replied. It should be mentioned here that my parents allowed me the privilege of steering the car only once, partly because of the Big Blue incident and partly because I nearly ran the car off the road when the one time Dad let me do it.
“No, I mean like drive the car,” Bo clarified before adding, “I don’t want your fat ass riding in my lap.”
While surprised, I did remember overhearing Bo mention to someone earlier that day that he was going to “let” me drive his car, a rusty brass-colored 1978 Mazda GLC hatchback that he had lovingly dubbed the Golden Bean. According to Mazda, GLC meant “Great Little Car,” but if you ask me, it could have stood for “Gas-Leaking Car” or “Golden Load of Crap.” Purchased for a pittance of $100, the Golden Bean was a teenager’s typical first car: it did not have air-conditioning or a functioning emergency brake, and it leaked a different vital fluid on a daily basis. Often I would wake up to find that the car had rolled out of its ordinary spot and into a neighbor’s yard during the night, or I would have to dribble around an electric green puddle of anti-freeze when shooting a three-pointer in our driveway basketball court.
“No way, Bo. I’m only eleven years old. I can’t drive your car; it’s illegal. Besides, we could get arrested.” I chirped back, hoping that my apparent fearfulness and rudimentary knowledge of automotive law would be enough to satisfy Bo’s peculiar request.
“Do it, or I’ll kick your ass,” he replied forcefully.
Bo decided to play his trump card fast and early. I wasn’t even finished arranging the cards in my hand before he had already slammed his ace of spades on the table. My fear of operating a vehicle was no match for my fear of fraternal violence. I would do anything to avoid brutality at my brother’s hand regardless of how seldom he administered it or whether it meant doing something far more dangerous, such as driving a manual-shift car underage.
With this new-found interest in driving burning urgently, I got behind the wheel and received a brief driver’s ed session from Bo. I would steer and work the pedals while he would operate the gearshift.
Left pedal: clutch.
Center pedal: brake.
Right pedal: gas.
It seemed simple enough. After all, we were only going up the street, taking a right turn into the driveway, and parking the car. What could go wrong? Once I confirmed everything I had just heard, I uneasily put my left sneaker on the left pedal, released it, and put my other sneaker on the far right pedal and pressed it carefully.
Huzzah! The Golden Bean crept forward, and Bo and I started up the street. In thinking about the reaction of my friends at school when I would tell them “Oh yeah, on Sunday night, I drove Bo’s car home,” my prepubescent chest started to puff up with pride. As we crested Sans Souci Way, I turned the House of Pain back up. If my imagined heroics weren’t enough, at that very moment, some neighborhood kids outside caught sight of me behind the wheel.
“Hey yo, Michael! You’re DRIVING!?” called out Thomas, one of the “bad influences” who lived on Sans Souci Court.
“Put the shit-kicker song on, Bo,” I commanded, growing more confident by the second.
“Lookin’ good, Michael! Lookin’ good!” shouted Denise, a girl whom we had cruelly nicknamed “Trainwreck Teeth,” in reference to her unfortunate orthodontia.
I waved at the two kids before Bo snapped me back to the task at hand. “OK, Michael. You need to press the brake lightly when you turn the car and park.”
“Turn?”
“Yes, just turn the wheel to the right but as you do that push the brake, so we slow down.”
“Right, the brake. Which one’s the brake again?”
“The middle-” Bo’s sentence was interrupted by the sound of the chokeberry bush in our front yard going under the car. I failed to turn a full ninety degrees, and I had pressed the gas instead of the brake, so we began to pick up speed toward a massive tree just to the left of the carport. As we whizzed by the basketball goal, the giant Georgia pine approached fast on the right. My inability to make the right turn kept us from nailing the tree, and we plowed into a brick embankment running adjacent to the house. After the car shuddered and died, a bit of smoke emanated from the hood.
“THE MIDDLE ONE!” Bo cracked, finishing the sentence he had started before I turned the Golden Bean into a rally car. His voice had grown shaky. The weight of our actions and their soon-to-be consequences sunk in. Mom and Dad would be outside soon, and although they would see me behind the wheel, Bo would ultimately be held responsible. That meant being grounded for so long that I would be able to vote in my first election before he would breathe free air again. I don’t suppose it mattered much anyway. His main mode of transportation was the biggest victim of his folly.
Mom then burst outside, frantic. “WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT?!?!” she shouted. By this time, Bo and I had already vacated the Golden Bean and were quickly making our way toward the carport. Mom stopped us at the edge of the driveway.
“Bo, what was that noise? Where’s your car?”
“In the yard, Mom.”
“In the yard? What’s it doing there?”
“Ask Michael.”
At 11, I had two lines of defense: my tear ducts and my testimony that Bo had threatened to beat me up. After hearing the tearful recount of Bo’s and my conversation in the car, Mom’s angry gaze left my flushed face and returned to Bo’s. Perhaps relieved that neither one of her sons was hurt, Mom was doing her best impression of the eye of a hurricane; she seemed eerily calm despite having just discovered her son driving four years before receiving his learner’s permit.
“I should’ve known. I could hear the car coming up the road. It sounded like you drove it in first gear all the way up the street.”
“He did, Mom. I hope my transmission’s not ruined,” Bo interjected, hoping to shift at least some of the blame back onto me.
“Bo, LOOK AT WHERE YOUR CAR IS! Your transmission is the least of your worries right now. Shut up and get inside.”
Bo and I went inside, and the Golden Bean spent the night in the yard. Our initial punishment involved spending the following day, Labor Day, helping our father work on the hobbled car. Frankly, I could think of no worse retribution for any party involved. Sadly, Dad’s surgery on the car didn’t go well, and Bo had to replace the Golden Bean soon thereafter. As it turns out, my parents were still calculating my real punishment and deployed it once I turned 15: they utterly refused to let me operate a vehicle without first attending forty hours of driver’s education classes. Better some driving instructor get hurt than them, they said.
Despite Ralph the driving instructor’s best efforts, I still caused a car accident within six months of turning 16. After Mom and he divorced, Dad purchased a pair of 240-series Volvos and eventually bequeathed one to me when the time was right—i.e., after I had attended aforementioned driver’s ed classes and had spent an additional thirty hours acquiring road experience with a stranger. Once I had conquered these hurdles, Dad handed me the keys to his maroon 1976 Volvo 244 DL, which I dubbed Fred.
Shortly after the car entered my charge, it was discovered that its head gasket was busted, so Dad took it to Fernando, his Venezuelan mechanic. Fernando’s junkyard was home to some of the most colorful automobiles to ever roam the streets of Atlanta—including a green Chevy Impala with pennies hand-glued along every one of its edges, upholstered with shag carpet, and otherwise decorated in a Virgin Mary motif. When Fred was ready, Dad had me get the car from the shop. No problem. I knew how to get to Fernando’s, and I even knew about the second exit to the shop.
As I pulled out, I looked to my right and saw no cars coming. I then looked to my left and saw no cars coming, although some of my field of vision was impeded by a large sign advertising a Mexican barber shop. In the instant that I pulled the car into traffic, a taxi-cab came barreling from the left, and I t-boned it.
Fred’s sturdy Swedish front-end tore into the passenger side fender, crumpling nearly the entire right side of the other car. The driver pulled over, got out, and appeared to be fine. A moment later, a woman exited the car from the driver’s side. She looked somewhat distraught but free from any significant harm. In broken English, the driver asked that I just call my insurance company without informing the police, so I wouldn’t get a ticket. I went to the Mexican barber shop and called Dad, and he called the insurance company after briefly berating me for getting into an accident. I also called the police.
After getting my side of the story, the policewoman who arrived at the scene ran both of our licenses. It turns out that the taxicab driver was operating his vehicle on a suspended license, and so he was handcuffed and placed in the back of the policewoman’s squad-car. After watching the victim of the accident ride off with the police, I put Fred in reverse and pulled back into Fernando’s shop. After several weeks and a couple thousand dollars in repairs, Fernando had healed Fred to the best of his ability.
While the car continued to operate in the most technical sense of the word, it was never the same after the accident. It began to ooze a new fluid every so often. The gas gauge soon stopped working, so I just refueled every 200 miles. The dash lights also went out shortly thereafter, so I had no idea how fast I was traveling at night.
After eight months of driving under these dangerous conditions, Dad finally bought another car, and I inherited Muffin, my step-mother’s silver 1992 Toyota Corolla. We soon sold Fred to a pair of hippies whose sights were set on Panama City, Florida. When asked whether the car could make the 300-mile trip, Dad instructed the patchouli-scented pair to check the car’s oil levels vigilantly, and they should not have any problems getting there. Six weeks later, Dad received a call from the Alabama Department of Transportation. The car had been abandoned on the side of I-85 and was available for him to retrieve. Dad declined.
I have been in two minor car accidents since Fred, bringing my official count to three. I think that’s a good round number. I now drive carefully and cautiously. I look both ways three times. I try not to use my cell phone when driving. I use my turn signal for each lane change and each turn. Meanwhile, Bo drives like an asshole: he cuts people off; he never signals; and he’s constantly playing with his iPhone. Yet he has not been in a car accident of any kind, excepting the one he shared with me that summer evening. Some of us are just lucky, I guess.