Once I finally decided to get my license at age 17, I made up for lost time with a vengeance. I had an amazing car and that alone seemed like a mandate to drive as if I were preparing to audition to be a stunt driver in movies like this. My father, who in thirty years of driving NEVER got a ticket or caused an accident, who thought cruise control was for dilettantes with poor muscle control, who regarded driving as one of the most serious responsibilities a person had, was predictably livid by the evidence of my passion for velocity; beyond the interesting wear pattern on my tires and my underwhelming fuel efficiency, the ever perceptive service staff at my dealer let him know that his daughter was certainly enjoying herself.
He was unable to impress upon me how vital it was to slow the fuck down until one day, while making me anxious by inhabiting the front passenger seat, he exhorted me to drive as if he weren’t in the car at all. Like every other teenager, I tended to drive as if I were in the car with a DMV official whenever a parent was with me. “Spare me your bullshit discipline, edi. I know you don’t really drive like this.” Smarting, I sulked for a moment instead of devoting all of my attention to the four-way stop we were atÂ…I had given a cursory look to my right and left and my lead foot was approaching the accelerator, to zip through the auto-free intersection.
I can still barely recall what happens next, and that is astonishing, considering my freakish ability to recount information like what my best friend “Eileen Perfume” was wearing during our Senior-year broadcasting class in high school, when we found out that LA was burning after the Rodney King verdict.
I still hadn’t mastered the art of accelerating without causing people’s heads to snap backwards in to the headrests, so I know the car must have lurched forward, thanks to a lethal combination of my impatience and an uber-responsive engine.
My father, who had a voice so powerful he never needed a microphone when he was up on the altar, shouted “STOP!”, the noise of his command more overwhelming than usual since we were in such a small space. I still shake and go weak when I think of what would have happened, had I made the same mistake my little sister made ten days in to HER career as a driver, when she accidentally hit the gas instead of the brakes at a stoplight. It’s so easy to do, especially when you are young, all the more so when you are in a panic. The lead foot landed in the middle of the floor, not the right and the familiar Antiblockiersystem pulse was as apprehensible as my own at that terror-filled moment. We lurched forward before being thrown back, seatbelts locking so tightly I felt like I was being strangled.
There, in front of me. Barely three feet away. Eyes wide with horror, pigtails gently swaying with the breeze. She couldn’t have been older than six, as she wobbled over her lavender bike. Unable to control it, she had nearly fallen over in her attempt to stop. She stood up and almost tripped as she tried to disentangleÂ…finally, she regained her balance, picked up the handlebars and walked herself to the other side of the street, where she continued to stare at me.
My father was grinding his teeth, something he did when he was filled with rage. “Get. out. now. I. will. drive.” My right foot was still inches from the floorboards. It felt paralyzed. I finally shifted and jerked up the parking brake. Daddy was waiting, enamel still serving as proxy for me, having already yanked open the driver’s side door. The tremors were making it impossible to take off my seatbelt. The little girl was still staring.
Finally, I was out of the car, walking slowly to the other side. I mercifully slid in to the backseat, grateful for whatever distance I could get from his wrath AND the fact that he couldn’t glower at me in the rearview. As soon as he heard a click, we were off, carefully of course. His rage was almost as controlled as his driving.
“NOW do you understand why I tell you to slow down? What if you had been alone? What if you didn’t brake in time? She would be DEAD. Because of your stupidity.”
My tear ducts wearily reported for duty and unlike when they usually were summoned, this time I was the asshole. I was at fault. He was right. He knew this, and he reminded me of it all the way home. To this day, I am terrified that I will not see someone small, who wobbles out from behind a parked car. I am paranoid that my foot won’t be a centrist. I am haunted by the look in her eyes and his.
What a heartbreaking tragedy, for a car to hurt a pedestrian, especially a little one.
:+:
Tragedy breaks hearts in Staten Island yesterday:
She was partway across the street, steps away from the waiting school bus that would take the eighth-grader to Intermediate School 72 on Staten Island.
Then tragedy struck.
A tan Nissan Quest slammed into Dilane Sandrakumar, shattering the minivan’s windshield and propelling the 13-year-old girl onto the vehicle’s hood, where she lay until the driver came to a stop nearly 70 feet away - sending the girl tumbling onto the street, witnesses said.
Dilane, akka to four siblings, was “always careful in crossing”, according to her distraught father. She’s at St. Vincent’s Hospital.
“I feel very sad, she’s in bad condition,” said a weeping Sandrakumar Sabaratnam, 46, the girl’s father. “We don’t know what will happen.
My heart just aches— she usually walks with her 11-year old brother, but on this day, she wanted to get to school early for a breakfast.
As her yellow school bus waited across Willowbrook Road with its lights flashing and stop sign extended, she began trotting across - only to step into the path of the van, driven by Anil John, 41, an off-duty MTA engineer.
“I heard a crash. I thought it was two cars,” said Mike Eliano, 11, a sixth-grader who was already on the Pioneer school bus. “I saw her flying through the air. She got hit very high and she was bleeding on the face.”
After coming to a stop down the block, John - who was heading home from an overnight shift - got out of the van and yelled “Oh my God, what did I do?” as he stared at the motionless girl and her backpack, which flew off her body, witnesses said.
That’s right. As our unknown tipster pointed out, it was a Malayalee (one with my “last” name even) who hit a little Sri Lankan girl. Before you attempt to ream me in the comments, know the obvious: I don’t care if it were a blue person who hit a pink one, it would still be as terrible. However, thanks to little coincidences (first name-last names, a picture which resembles mine from that age, of a little girl wearing jhumkas like I did) it affects me more keenly.
There was no stop sign or traffic light at the intersection, and a police source said John was going about 30 mph.
He has not been cited with any wrongdoing, but prosecutors are reviewing the case to decide whether to file charges, said a spokesman for District Attorney Daniel Donovan Jr.
Anil John has two major problems, IMO. His accounts of what happened differed; earlier he said he saw the telltale flashing of school bus lights, then he said he didn’t. Sketchier than that, the article says his job at the MTA couldn’t be confirmed.
Friends and neighbors have rallied around the man:
“I’m very surprised by this. He’s a very religious man,” said neighbor Jennifer Petronic, 34. “I would never think that he would disobey the law.”
Predictably, such proof of good character is irrelevant to some:
The injured girl’s outraged father, however, demanded that John be arrested.
“He [was] in such a hurry to go somewhere,” said Sabaratnam, who moved his family to New York from Sri Lanka. “He didn’t care about anybody.”
