Here's how you go from being an aggressive driver who is willing to risk your life and others' just to get somewhere a few minutes faster, to being a safe, happy driver. I'm making this for a mom I know who was talking about how crazy she drives, because I used to drive aggressively myself. I've even run a few people off the road. I used to speed frequently, and I have never gotten in a car accident sober. I did wreck my car on an empty road by myself while drunk driving, which is why I'm nine years sober now. I want to share with you the importance of being a safe driver, because there are so many bad things that can happen from driving aggressively, from somebody else getting hurt to just guaranteed stress.
When I drive like a grandma these days, it's relaxing. I'm not arriving at my destination all stressed out. I'm not getting worked up like I used to when I was speeding and tailgating and cutting people off. And when other people drive aggressively now, I don't get all bothered by it, because they don't remind me of what I'm doing anymore.
The day I decided to learn the easy way
Here's how I went from being an aggressive driver to a safe driver. I realized one day, when I was a few months sober in AA, that I had the ability to decide I didn't want to suffer from alcoholism anymore and that I didn't want to be a drunk driver. I didn't want to go through all the pains of drinking. And I realized that if I can make that kind of change in my life, I want to change every other area of my life that needs to change.
I was sitting at a red light. At the time, I used to often floor it at a red light just for fun and to get out ahead of the traffic. I had this little intuitive thought come into my mind: did I want to learn the easy way or the hard way when it came to my driving? I said I would absolutely like to learn the easy way, and I would like to be a safe driver. So I decided I would not smash on the gas coming out of that red light. And the car a lane over from me floored it coming out of the red light and went right into my lane. If I had floored it, we would have gotten into a wreck together, or perhaps caused some other people to wreck. I see today that I had the chance to avoid a car accident because I listened to my intuition and I decided to be a safe driver.
You already made a choice — you can make a new one
If you think, "Well, this is just how I drive," that's crap. At some point you made a decision to be an aggressive driver. Maybe it was just one day when you were in a hurry and you started driving that way, and you got away with it, so then you kept driving that way. When you're single and you feel like nothing bad can happen to you and you can get away with anything, it doesn't seem quite as crazy to be an aggressive driver. But once you start seeing the bad things that can happen in your life, once you see your friends get hurt and have accidents and die, then you realize, okay, I really would like to be a safe driver.
I remember when my wife was pregnant with our first child, I was thinking that I needed to take care of my daughter's dad, and that the dumbest thing my daughter's dad was doing was my driving. How stupid would it be if my daughter's father was killed or seriously injured, or hurt somebody else in a car accident, going to the gym to do personal training, or going to get a massage, or going to dinner? How stupid would that be? And I realized that by my decision to be a safe driver, to focus on driving safely, I could avoid whatever was going to happen that would have happened based on driving aggressively.
I have a specific person in mind for this, someone who just identifies as "I'm just an aggressive driver." But you have a choice in that. And it's a very important choice. Because what if your kids don't grow up with you as their parent because you died in some stupid car accident that was totally avoidable? What if you just slowed down? What if, by being a safe driver, you could eliminate a bunch of unnecessary stress in your life?
Slowing down slowed my stress
I've found these things to be true. By slowing down, I've also slowed down my stress. When I drive somewhere now, I am not in a hurry to get there, because either I leave in plenty of time or I just accept that, hey, I'm going to get there late, and too bad. If I wanted to get there earlier, I should have left earlier. I'm not going to try and make up for it by driving fast.
I remember when I was in my early 20s, I drove hundreds of miles averaging 20-plus over the speed limit, sometimes getting up to over 100 miles an hour in my Toyota Corolla, weaving in and out of traffic, passing in the right lane on the three-lanes-each-side interstate, tailgating people who were going slow. I used to do so many dumb things driving. And the utter stupidity of it is hard to believe until you face it and you see, hey, am I in control of myself, or am I not in control of myself? Because nothing happens to you when you get in the car except that old habits and behaviors load up. At some point you chose those, and you're free to choose new ones today.
It's very important to choose new behaviors, because if you don't change aggressive driving, in my mind you're consenting to getting in a car accident. If you speed and drive crazy, you are saying that it's okay if I wreck. I'm willing to take a chance on wrecking. And a car wreck could mean a lot of injury, a lot of pain, a lot of expense. It can mean, from what I've heard in Alcoholics Anonymous, that a lot of people have relapsed, and it started with a car accident. It started by wrecking their car, and then they're injured, then they're at the doctor, then the doctor's prescribing pain pills, then they're taking the pain pills as prescribed, and then suddenly they either start taking too many of the pain pills or they take a drink. From my view, the place to prevent all of that was in your decision on how to drive before you even got in the car.
Setting the intention to arrive safely
When I get in the car, every time, often right before I even get in, as soon as I start driving, I set the intention that I want to arrive safely. I will do anything it takes. I'll drive any direction I need to. I'll pay attention instead of being distracted. I'll do whatever it takes to arrive at my destination safely. Because when I'm getting in that car, nothing matters more than arriving safely. That's the only thing that really matters. Where I'm going, what I'm doing, everything else is secondary.
The cool thing is that when I'm driving safely, other people's aggressive driving tends not to bother me. I tend to want to let them get away from me as soon as possible. I don't get into it with other people, because putting your finger out the window and screaming and honking, things I used to do, those can cause car accidents. Those can cause violence. And I don't want car accidents, and I don't want violence. I want to set an example for my children, too. Because what kind of example are you setting for your children when you've got your hand out the window and you're screaming at somebody because they changed lanes?
I've found that my choice to drive safely has also bled over into other areas of my life. Driving tends to be more of a high-energy activity, and if I can change the way I drive, I can change the way I play video games, the way I talk to people. I feel very empowered by it. I'm so grateful that I took the easy way to learn to be a driver, and I'm so grateful that I'm able to be a safer driver instead of taking the harder way. You don't have to wreck a car or hurt somebody or get a speeding ticket in order to see the necessity and the value of being a safer driver.
Trusting Your Intuition Behind the Wheel
In my experience, your intuition can warn you even when there is no outward signal of danger. You may be able to tell when somebody is going to run a stop sign or when somebody is about to grossly violate the traffic laws. I was driving my daughter back from the pool a few months ago, and I could just tell this person was going to run a stop sign and that an accident was possible. It was a two lane road with the double yellow lines down the middle, and I went over onto the other side of the road in anticipation of what they were likely to do. Sure enough, they blasted right into my lane with the wheel sliding out. I told my daughter, did you see that? Did you see what I just did? My intuition, even though there was no definitive sign, told me something. The person was driving a little fast, and I just had a feeling that if I went into that other lane, I could avoid an accident with this car. I followed that feeling, and it worked.
I saw my dad and mom have a similar experience years before. They were in the car, we were all just laughing and having fun, and then my mom's intuition kicked in. All of a sudden, right in the middle of laughing, she looked at my dad and said, pay attention, put both hands on the wheel. My dad was a disagreeable guy lots of times. He often would have debated her, but he immediately put both hands on the wheel. Right after that, on a two lane 60 mile an hour road in Alabama, a car swerved right into our lane. If my dad had not been paying very close attention and been perfectly ready for that, we might have all gotten killed. But my dad was paying perfect attention, had both hands on the wheel, swerved off the road to dodge the car, and we were all like, wow, that felt like divine intervention.
Setting the Intention to Be a Safe Driver
That kind of thing can happen if you set the intention: I will do whatever it takes to be a safe driver. And if you are driving aggressively, out there pushing the limits all the time, I've come to believe you are going to pay the price at some point. You can pay the price and learn the hard way with a speeding ticket, a car accident, an injury, a lawsuit, hurting someone else, or stress. Even if you never get in a wreck, it is so much more stressful to drive aggressively.
I made this for a specific person, and I am going to send it to them, and I hope it helps. If it even just helps one person stop driving like a lunatic, we are all going to be a lot better off. This one lives on my Jerry Banfield recovery channel, where I have a lot of videos about getting sober along with relationships, health, wellness, and spirituality. Out of all my channels, this is my favorite. This is the channel where we make some real change, and you can find more of this same journey in my Life playlist.
If this resonated with you, I would love to get to know you better and keep making videos like this based on what you actually want to see. The best way to do that today is to join my community, where we hang out, chat, and support each other through all of this together. You can come be part of it over at the Jerry Banfield Family.
Drive safe out there, trust that intuition when it speaks to you, and remember that the intention to protect yourself and everyone else on the road is worth far more than getting anywhere a few minutes faster.