Back Seat Drivers

Have you ever been driving while some one in the back seat yells at you, “You are driving so slow!” or “You are a crazy driver. You need to slow down!” And there are other types of back seat drivers who take upon themselves the responsibility of yelling the directions at you as if you don't know where you are going. They say, “Turn here!”, or, “Watch out!” just to press your buttons and make your blood boil. For those of you who have not had the privilege of having a back seat driver, it is the most annoying thing in the world. It makes me want to turn around and slap the person but that would compromise so I would never do a thing like that.

Whenever My great grandmother would ride as a passenger, she would always tell the driver, “Red light,” and, “Green light,” as if she was driving with a blind person. I feel bad for her husband. She repeatedly said red light and green light to him for sixty five years. He must have had very much patience.

Once I was driving in a car full of noisy and distracting boys. Now, that was a bad idea to begin with. To make things worse,they all thought that they were great back seat drivers and that they would help me to drive “safely”. Due to the crazy things that they were doing, we may have been throwing water balloons from windows of something like that, and I was not paying as much attention to the road as I should have been. I was laughing and having a good time and my mind was not focused on the road. As I was passing the turn where I needed to make a left, everyone in the back seat yelled, “Turn, turn, turn”. Rather than slowing down and checking the left lane for oncoming traffic, I quickly made a turn that was not quite a U-turn but not a left turn either. I nearly missed a car that would have resulted in a head on collision, hit the curb, and almost ran over a pedestrian. Of course the guys in the car all started yelling and freaking out, which didn’t help.

The obvious lesson to learn from this story is, don't listen to backseat drivers. You have a better view of the road than they do and your mind should be more focused on the road theirs is. Apply this to life off of the road. You have the most knowledge of what is occurring in your life. You almost always know what is right and what is wrong. Trust your instincts and do what you know is the right choice. Don't let others persuade you to do something hasty. The best way to not let others persuade you to make wrong choices is to avoid the situations where you will most likely be put under peer pressure. For example, if I would have never been in the car with all of those people in the first place, I would never have been so distracted and I would not have put their lives in danger. Stay away from people and places that will persuade you do make terrible choices. Do what you know is right.