Luke’s Notebook

This year has been such an incredible eye-opener in terms of how fragile life can be. I’ve learned that people never plan to, for instance, get involved in a fatal car accident. Actually, going back to a year ago, I realize that I have learned even more since then.

It was approximately a year ago that my 10-year-old cousin Jenny was diagnosed with leukemia.

In the past year, we’ve learned that a friend of the family’s, Diane, was diagnosed with cancer.

I’ve mentioned this many, many times, but at the beginning of this year, our new friend Elizabeth passed away after a car accident.

This spring, an 18-year-old girl named Jennifer Reitzell was killed after the car she was riding in evidently hit a concrete barrier or something.

A couple of weeks ago, a 64-year-old Belleville attorney, Bob Becker, had a heart attack while driving.

Last week, there was a terrible accident on Interstate 44 near Six Flags. A dumptruck rear-ended a minivan, killing all five of its occupants and starting a chain reaction that ended with some 12 or so people injured and seven killed.

This is pretty disheartening to read through. As I look back on these different tragedies, it’s hard not to get paranoid and extremely protective over my family and friends. But I have also learned that we can’t let ourselves live in fear and make decisions out of paranoia.

You could argue that since there are so many fatal accidents, a way to avoid them would be to never ride in a car. To me, that is extreme. When you start thinking that way, then you might as well never leave your house or your room, for that matter, in case you should accidentally fall down the stairs or slip on a wet floor.

What, then, are we to do? I think we need to unceasingly exercise good decisions and wisdom in every part of life, especially when it comes to something like driving. But driving is so common. It’s so easy to get your license and hop behind the wheel of a vehicle.

Though it’s not considered a risk per se, I think driving is a calculated risk. But everything is to a certain degree. I don’t think driving is necessarily dangerous or risky. It’s obvious that it can be; we’ve all heard (or known) of people who have been killed in an accident. The sad thing is, almost all of those are avoidable.

What’s tough is we don’t have the luxury of rewinding the tape and making a different decision. If anybody thought Elizabeth would have been in danger that night by riding in the car, there’s no way her family or friends would have allowed her to ride. Or if somebody advised the family inside of the minivan near Six Flags that there wasn’t going to be a horrible accident in that vicinity, they surely would have taken a different route.

We can’t let ourselves live in fear, because that would just suck the life right out of us. If we started to panic every time anybody we cared about hit the road, we would be a mess in a hurry.

I think our responsibilities are to make wise and prudent decisions. After that, don’t worry about it. You can’t help it if a drunk driver crosses into your lane, but you can try to avoid a time of day or a particular area that is notoriously dangerous.

Another thing you can do is choose wisely who you ride with. Even if it’s a simple five-minute ride, your driver has control of your life for those five minutes. If (s)he gets distracted or is just a bad driver, then you are in big danger.

There is definitely a fine line here. I think we need to just constantly use wisdom and discernment when making these decisions, and from there we just need to trust our great God. Even the safest of drivers is still prone to a mistake, a flat tire, a deer hopping onto the road — whatever the case may be.

You may be wondering, “What’s the big deal? So what is my friend isn’t the best of drivers?” Honestly, you might never get in an accident if you ride with someone who isn’t the best driver. But consider this: When somebody is killed in an accident — even if the driver wasn’t at fault — there are undoubtedly parents, broken, saying, “If only we didn’t allow our baby to ride with so-and-so.”

After a serious accident, we may be able to see that maybe it wasn’t such a great situation. We don’t have the ability to go back in time to change that, so we need to be vigilant here and now, making sure that we’re not letting ourselves or loved ones get involved in a potentially dangerous situation.

So, to summarize: Be safe. Be wise. Don’t ride with somebody who doesn’t strike you as a good driver. Don’t put yourself in one of those situations. Though you might just “get away” with it, it’s not a good idea to put yourself in that spot.