On Friday morning, Nov. 10, as my husband and I were walking our 4 1/2-year-old son to school, we saw a young girl get hit by a car. It’s every parent’s worst nightmare, but this incident was particularly infuriating because it was caused by road rage.
Here’s how one girl’s morning walk to school with her little sister turned into an ambulance ride to the hospital.
At 7:40 a.m. (10 minutes before the school bell), the sidewalks and crosswalks around Oak Park’s Whittier Elementary School were filled with children and parents.
My husband and I were crossing the intersection at Cuyler and Augusta with our son, who was walking his bike across the street. A female motorist was waiting at the stop sign for us to finish crossing Cuyler before she turned left. As we were crossing, the sound of the motorist in the car behind her honking his horn repeatedly shattered the peaceful autumn morning, drowning out the laughter of children and the voices of adults greeting each other as they ushered their children to school.
I turned my head toward the honking, wondering what the fuss was about. Then I smiled at the female motorist to thank her for allowing us to cross the street before she made her left turn, in spite of the insistent honking of the motorist in the car behind her. She smiled back, shrugging her shoulders at the rudeness of the honking motorist, and began to make her left turn.
But Mr. Road Rage didn’t wait to pull up to the stop sign and come to a full stop. Instead, he acted out his rage at the delay, zooming around the woman who was still turning left and shooting through the intersection. Instead of looking ahead, he was staring at us, as if to imply that we were all idiots who were wasting his valuable time.
The next thing we heard was a cracking sound and a thud, which was the sound of his car hitting an 11-year girl crossing Augusta with her sister. Immediately she started screaming and limped to the curb, her terrified younger sister wailing, tears running down her face. The man stopped his car, jumped out, and ran to the girls.
Those who had seen the accident gave eyewitness accounts of the incident. Hopefully the young girl will heal from her injuries, but my guess is that she or her sister will not cross a street again for a long time without apprehension. And I’m sure that her mother, who received the call at work that her child had been hit by a car, will relive that awful moment many times in her mind.
The bottom line: Road rage is blinding. If this motorist hadn’t been laying on his horn and then zooming around the car in front of him while looking in our direction instead of in the direction that his car was moving, he surely would have seen the 11-year-old girl and her younger sister crossing the street.
But he was blinded-by road rage. He was focusing on his aggravation instead of the road ahead-in a school zone at 7:50 a.m., when the streets were lined with young children walking to school.
I’ve thought about that poor girl and her sister all weekend. But I’ve also been thinking about how instructive that incident should be for the rest of us. It’s a known fact that too many drivers in Oak Park drive too fast in a family-oriented community that is home to a large number of children.
That Friday’s incident should be a wake-up call. Instead of getting up and feeling grateful that we have another day in this world (something that many people in failing health do not fail to appreciate), we often wake up feeling pressured by the need to do too many things in a day that invariably doesn’t have enough hours in it.
So we drive around with tunnel vision, focusing on the meetings we have to get to downtown, the errands we have to run, and the presumed idiocy of the motorist in front of us.
The motorist who hit that little girl on Friday morning needs a serious attitude adjustment. No meeting downtown could be more important than a child making it safely across the street. And road rage (never a pretty thing) is totally inappropriate when it is directed at a courteous motorist who is pausing before turning to ensure the safety of children crossing the street in a school zone.
Road rage is dangerous and inappropriate anywhere. It erodes civility, diminishes our quality of life and endangers us all. But road rage in a school zone at 7:50 a.m. on a school day? When the streets and crosswalks are filled with children as young as age four? This is unforgivable. It is enough to make every parent’s heart shiver-and enough to give us all pause about the way we live and the priorities we set.
We need another crossing guard at the intersection of Cuyler and Augusta; that much is clear. I hope the village corrects that problem after this incident. We have a wonderful crossing guard named Queen at the intersection of Ridgeland and Augusta who is committed to keeping children safe every day. If there had been a crossing guard with her dedication at the crosswalk of Augusta and Cuyler last Friday, my guess is that an 11-year-old girl would not have been traveling in an ambulance to the hospital instead of continuing on to school.
But the deeper, more disturbing, problem still exists: Too many of us are moving too fast to see what is right in front of us. There will always be individuals who will never slow down to savor life’s sweetness. And many of us are guilty, at one time or another, of letting the pressures of work and errands crowd out life’s all-too-brief glories. With e-mail and cellphones, everything in our life is moving faster. Suddenly, we seem to think that everything should be instantaneous.
But it still takes the same amount of time for a young child to cross a street while walking his bicycle.
I hope this motorist can take some time out of his busy schedule to thank God that the child he hit is still alive. And to consider the impact of his road rage on those two sisters, their mom and the school community. Shaving an extra couple of minutes off his morning commute could not have been worth the hours that were lost talking to police, filling out reports, the remorse and the guilt, and the time he will have to spend in court to account for his actions.
Just think of how different his morning could have been if he had gotten up half an hour earlier and made his morning commute a time to contemplate the day, appreciate the golden autumn leaves or listen to the laughter of children on their way to school while waiting patiently at the crosswalk.
My guess is that this motorist’s aggravated state didn’t leave him much room to contemplate the beauty of an autumn day-or to see two young girls with backpacks in front of him crossing the street.
The bottom line: If you can’t slow down for your own quality of life, please slow down for the safety of our children.