My son got his learner’s permit last year, and I was thus obligated to ride along with him and try to teach him how to be a good driver. For the most part, he learned quickly, but my biggest complaint was how he drove in our own neighborhood. Despite my constant warnings that kids played in our streets all the time and were regularly running between cars with little warning, [Son] seemed to think I was being paranoid.
He never went quite as slow as I’d like on the roads, though he was still going slower than some reckless drivers in our development. More worrying, though, was his complete lack of situation awareness. He didn’t pay enough attention to the road ahead or scan for potential risks.
We were coming back home from a practice drive when I noticed a car parked on the side of the road had its blinkers on.
Me: “The car ahead has its blinkers on.”
I don’t know how he does it, but I could hear the eye roll in his response.
Son: “It’s not even movin—”
Me: “—STOP!”
Son: “Wah?”
[Son] wasted a precious fraction of a second trying to figure out why I was shouting at him and composing his witty verbal response. During that time, the door of the car with its blinkers on started to open right in front of us.
I grabbed the steering wheel from my spot in the passenger seat and twisted it to turn us into the other lane, since I had been watching the road and potential hazards. I knew there was no car coming in that lane, so it was safe to swerve into it.
Me: “Brake!”
[Son] belatedly listened and slammed the brakes. We ended up sitting diagonally across both lanes. Had the door of the car in front of us opened fully, we would still have run into it and ripped it off its hinges. Luckily, the door stopped only a fraction of the way open, which meant that the turn into the other lane was enough to avoid hitting it.
I’d shouted a stop because I’d seen someone opening the door, but hadn’t had enough time to process who it was opening it. Now that we were stopped, I could look into the car proper, to see a young child sitting in the driver’s side seat of the car. A young woman was in the passenger side seat and had stretched over the seat and across the lap of the young child to yank the door shut as best as she could.
Eventually, she managed to get herself and the child out of the car. The child was crying and upset, but she still came over to check to make sure we were okay and apologize. Once the child had calmed down, I got a little more detail as to what had happened.
The child had wanted to play in his aunt’s new car, and so she had allowed him to do so only after repeatedly warning him that he wasn’t allowed to open the driver’s side doors without first getting permission from her. The child disregarded this rule, and his aunt had to grab the door to keep him from jumping out and getting struck by us.
Luckily, she had been paying enough attention to realize what was happening in time to grab the door. She apologized profusely to us and thanked us for not striking her car or the child.
As frightening as the situation was at the time, I have to say it worked wonders on [Son]. From that moment onward, he started driving much more slowly on neighborhood roads and was always watching for children.
Meanwhile, I spoke to the dad of the child who had been playing in his aunt’s car, and his dad says he has been far better about obeying their road safety rules since the incident. It seems the near disaster scared both boys enough to convince them they may want to listen when their elders warn them of something.
