Should You Still Be Driving?
A close look at the universal question
I am slowly talking myself into giving up my car.
Though, still, I honestly believe I am a very good driver, I cannot escape a tiny, nagging question: Could I live with myself if I were involved in an accident in which someone is injured or killed? Even if it were clearly not my fault, could I avoid suspecting some failure of eyesight or reflexive response or yet unknown factor had played a part in an accident that might not have happened if I weren’t driving?
So I have begun this conversation with myself.
It starts with the memory of former conversations, one in particular. For years, my three sisters and I discussed who would get our widowed father from behind the wheel of his car (none of us wanted to volunteer). “Never had an accident in fifty years!” our father would declare. None of us wanted to point out the chaos in his wake. We were saved by a family friend who undertook to explain to our father how much money he could save on gas, insurance, repairs, etc.; he threw in a list of small town neighbors happy to be on-call chauffeurs. My father died 12 years later, at 90, never having injured a fellow creature.
This background conversation relates to the personal relationship I have with my 2001 Volvo S40, The Bud. Less…
