Why I don't drive anymore...

This is an old toastmasters speech I did in 2009. I can't find the final version at the moment, this looks like a draft. I'll post it up anyway.

Side Note: Having spent the last couple months working in & out of a construction site (there's an awful lot going on in the yard I'm working in as I'm always have to keep out a look for welding, grinding, potential dropped objects, scaffolding, overhead crane movements, unpredicable korean motorcyclists...etc when walking through the HHI yard), I think that my situational awareness has improved  and so it should help with my driving. I'm going to perhaps consider getting back on the wagon this time when I return back to Perth.


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Good afternoon everyone. I’ve decided to explain to everyone here why I no longer drive anymore. As with any good story, I should probably start from the beginning. And so the beginning of this story would be the beginning of my driving career which all began in 2003 – my first year of uni when I started to realize that no way did I want my way uncool dad to keep dropping me off at friend’s parties. So I started to practice driving. I decided to go for go for gold and go for my manual drivers licence. Unfortunately the only manual car dad had at home was are ramshackled old combi, complete with fluffy dice and cowprint seats. It didn’t have power steering, I had to sit on two big cushions to see over the steering wheel, the indicators wouldn’t hold down and the accelerator from time to time got stuck. Needless to say, this was not the ideal training vehicle and was a parallel parking nightmare, especially for someone of my vertical stature. Sometimes I’d try to go up steep hills like the cinema carpark to the carousel shopping centre and I’d have to hold my breath not knowing whether the car would be able to make it. I consider learning to drive on a combi as mistake number 1 in my short lived driving career.

Mistake number 2 would be getting my dad to teach my how to drive. My dad has a very short temper and his method of telling me I was doing something wrong, was to doink me on the head…while I was driving!! Not the most ideal way of positive reinforcement. Needless to say, I was quick to ask mum to get me a driving instructor instead. After about 50 hours of paid driving lessons, I went for my first driving test in East Perth. It lasted no longer than 2 minutes. I failed because I only slightly overshot the line at the stop sign and realizing my mistake slowly reversed back about a couple feet. This did not go unnoticed by my assessor and was an automatic fail. However, this didn’t get my confidence down, I’d heard that most people fail there first driving test so I just applied for the next available test which was in kelmscott. Can you believe it, I failed the 2nd time because a didn’t stop for a family of ducks crossing the road?!! My assessor had to hit the breaks immediately followed by a lecture on how we have to protect our wildlife. I tried rationing with her, “but I thought they would fly away…or umm you know, go in between the wheels - Not under the wheels ofcourse!” My assessor evidently did not agree with me. The third time I failed my test I forgot to look over my shoulder before starting the car up again after stopping for a train at a railway crossing. On my fourth try of the driving test I finally passed!!! And it was total joy & freedom.

I drove everywhere for the next two years, with only a couple bumps and scratches, followed by two unfortunate accidents of similar nature which occurred in 2005/6 where I rammed into the back of a car in front of me during peak hour stop/start traffic on two occasions. At the time I was driving a ford fairlane which has a very long front and so I think I kept underestimating how much distance I needed to stop the car. Dad decided to trade the fairlane in and we got a nice shiny deep red 1998 model Volvo with sports wheel & leather interior instead complete with one of those “Bloody Volvo driver stickers” on it. I loved it. In hindsight, I do think that those two accidents were early warning signs of what was to come. In March 2006, I was driving home from my boyfriend’s house late at night. I had a 12 o’clock sharp curfew at the time. I was tired, as I’d been both working and studying at uni late that whole week and so as I was approaching the second last set of traffic lights back to my house, I just for a second, must have micro slept and thought that the green arrow to turn right was instead a big fat green circle to proceed driving forward, which it was not. I drove my car straight into oncoming traffic, two cars rolled over to avoid me, I spun around the centre traffic light twice and catapulted into the corner house, narrowly avoiding a street light and a tree and smashing right into a brick wall. I could remember it all happening in slow motion..first a hit to the headlights, then into a tree, then the glass shattering and finally the air bag punching me in the face. I unfortunately collided through a brick wall and into a house. I remember seeing through an open window of the house I'd just crashed into, a group of asian students watching tv on their lounge staring out at me in total disbelief. I also remember that, that past week I'd been absolutely obsessed with the Limp Bizkit song, "Nookie" and had been playing it in the car on repeat all week. It had been playing at the time I had the accident. The thoughts (in order) while I was having the accident were: "Shit, I think dad's going to notice that" (when I hit the first set of traffic lights and smashed a headlight), then "Oh crap", then "Oh shit", then "oh man...I really liked that cd!" as the front of the car collided with the tree.

I didn’t drive for a year and a half later since that accident. After another 50hrs of driving lessons and practice with my dad I decided to get behind the wheel again, but I had not been driving for longer than a week before I had yet another accident the week before I officially joined the work force. It was at the exit of Carousel Shopping Centre on the Hungry Jacks side. As I'm quite small, I drive very close to the wheel and sit propped up on cushions. As I was exiting the parking lot onto the main road leading up to the nearest traffic junction, while I looked both ways - I was too short to see over some road side hedges and did not see an incoming car getting ready to enter the parking lot at the same time I was trying to exit it. I unfortunately head on collided with the car. There wasn't too much damage to either of our cars as we were both travelling at low speeds. However, all the damage came to me from the airbag going off in my face and giving me carpet burn, a red eye and neck backlash. My first day at work, I came to work with an eye patch. People kept joking that there was a pirate working on the offshore facility I was supporting. Fortunately I was back to normal after about 2 weeks, but I have decided that the safest thing to do for both myself and others on the road is to remove the risk entirely and not drive anymore. I haven't driven by myself on trips further than the local deli for the last 3.5 yrs ....and so that my friends is why I don't drive anymore.

The one kind of good thing that that did come out of my last car accident was the fact that while I was in hospital getting checked up on for post-accident injuries. I decided to finally tell my parents about my boyfriend who I'd been seeing for the last 3 yrs without their knowledge. I was always scared that my parents would kick me out of home & disown me if they found out I was going out with a white boy who didn't go to uni, so I always planned to tell them after I had secured my first pay check in a permanent job so that I had money to move out. Since the accident happened a week before I officially joined the workforce, this was slightly premature. The only reason I'd really wanted to drive was to be able to go out and see him. I told me parents while I was in the hospital emergency waiting room. They thought I was delirious and making it up, and said, "Yes darling, we'll talk about this later" but I guess the whole timing of me telling them put things into perspective and they love him and have him over for dinner once a week. I think the morale of this little side note story is that "timing can be everything" (as they have since told me that had I told them while I was still in uni they would have had a much harder time accepting it) and always make the most of a somewhat crappy situation to capitalise on an opportunity. Being a quick thinker definitely helped here (reference to next my "Self Reflection" blog post).