Seat belts save lives – fasten yours!
“The seatbelt is the reason why you’re alive” he reiterated the line over and over again till it was tattooed and ringing against my shaken bones. I stared ahead from the ambulance onto my once sturdy car that now laid victimized on it’s vertical end.
“I am grateful for all the things that went right”, that was the thought that was pacing through my brain as the adrenaline rushed through my body. “Grateful for the ambulance reaching within a few minutes to the accident. Grateful for the phone falling onto my side when my car landed onto my door and grateful for being in a state of consciousness to make the call to the police to call for help when no one was around.”
It’s ironic how a few milliseconds of having your world turned around – quite literally, leave you traveling down the memory lane, reflecting on your words before you left, and all the decisions, happening that led to making this moment even less dangerous.
Revisiting the shaken memory of the car shifting to my lane, my first instinct was to turn right to save my car and the one in front. But as soon as I accelerated to my right, my car became it’s own entity, letting lose of its chain and my efforts to steer the wheel. But the efforts to halt the car by pressing on the breaks as hard as I could to get a grip on the screeching voices of the tyre against the road and the swift air against my face. Before I knew, that right costed me a left and back to right. After which I hit the pavement which resulted in my car to overturn, hit the roof, roll over the rocks and onto the grass landing on my door.
With the seatbelt keeping me intact to my seat, I watched the glass break. As though everything around me was moving and breaking except my self who watched from frozen in shock eyes – Until it landed. Once solid ground was hit, there were minute pieces of shattered glasses all around. My body was trembling, in shock. Unable to comprehend what just happened, and alone. My eyes darted to the phone that had fallen from the side to my side as I picked up and dialed the first number that came to my mind, 999. As the voice echoed at the end of the line, my voice raspy, and hesitant – I was crying. Not out of will or pain but out of shock.
A minute or two later after the call, there was a paramedic peeling away the broken tampered glass, after analyzing the situation to safely get me out. Unbuckling my seatbelt, he asked me to hold on to his hand to gently move out of the car – onto the grass where I was assessed for head injuries and spinal cord damage. I was safe, shaken and in shock. But safe. “It was a miracle; you hadn’t been hurt. You could’ve easily been thrown out the window if it weren’t for your seatbelt that kept you intact as the car turned, all sides touching the rocks and glasses breaking apart.” I look at the now deployed airbags that saved me from hitting my head against the sides. The car seemed to be the shell, that tossed, turn and have withstood all the impact.
“I didn’t step out of the house, thinking I am going to have an accident today and never in my life did I imagine it happening to me. It happens at the most unexpected of times, the road that I was familiar with ever since I was 13, my school route, my route to extracurricular, and now work.”
The importance of seatbelt never sunk in till I went through such an experience myself – so don’t wait for it to happen to you. Take this experience as a reminder of safety, for yourself and the others in your car, because they are your responsibility.
“Wear your seat belt. It’s much more comfortable than wearing a caste or bandages”
