If Alexis had a car that wasn’t up to the task, I seriously wonder if she’d be here right now.
She was incredibly fortunate, just three days earlier having a brake pad replacement. Ringwood folks should probably know they’re sharing a road with her, but thankfully, she’s been given enough of a shock to understand how easy it is to have an accident- without actually having hurt anyone else in the process.
My mum has mentioned many times that Dad was in a bad accident, but Dad never talks about it. He’s just militant when it comes to us being careful and focussed on the road. He made sure Alexis had her car serviced by Ringwoods best mechanic. I’ve always been the more absorbent one, taking all Dad’s instructions on board. He’s implored of us – so many times over not to ever take our focus off the road. Once when Alexis tried to change the radio station when Dad was giving her a driving lesson, he banned her for a month and refused to let her get behind the wheel. That is the first time either of us had ever been banned from anything, and Alexis had to wait another month to get off her Learners’ permit and go for her Ps.
Anyway, a few months later and now that Alexis has her own car, Dad’s pretty frantic, but so pleased she wasn’t in some beat up bomb yesterday when she had to slam on the stops. It made me think, when we think about what could go wrong on the road, we’re always thinking about OUR brakes, and OUR vehicle and how we are responsible for it. Personally, I never think about how safe other people’s cars are because I trust no one is going to slam into me, or come up over an oversight on the wrong side of the road. Which is what happened to Alexis. But her brakes worked. Thank God, her brakes worked.