She sticks the key into the ignition of Chuck Norris, her black ’99 Dodge Durango, and turns it, hearing the engine roar to life, being sure to observe her parents safety rules: no music and no friends.  Nothing can go wrong.  Her confidence is soaring.  After all, she only got her license yesterday; nothing could taint her driving record this soon.  She assumes that would come sometime later, years in the future.  But pulling out of her parking spot in the west parking lot, heading north, being sure that her seatbelt is tightly fastened beforehand, she misses one thing.  She does not have the right-of-way.  That is held by east-west traffic in the parking lot.  Lacking that knowledge, she proceeds to pull out, making her way closer to exiting the parking lot, but she is immediately stopped by the collision of her vehicle with another car.

                Maddy Cunningham, age 16 as of November 5, had this wreck.

The day of her birthday, she rushed to the DPS station at the first moment possible, taking a long lunch so that she would have the ability to legally drive alone as soon as she could.  The next day, she drove to school, all alone, for the first time in her life.  She anticipated having the next opportunity to drive home after school all day.  But after finishing her day and heading home, she encountered her first wreck.

“It was my fault,” Cunningham said.  “Cars were obstructing my view, so when I pulled out, I got hit by another car that was driving towards the exit.”

Junior Alex Smith was in this car, and didn’t have time to stop before hitting Cunningham in her ’99 Dodge.

“I had thought about how scary a wreck would be before this ever happened, but I didn’t think it would happen so soon,” Cunningham said.

Cunningham said that the incident greatly upset her, especially because of the fact that it was her first day driving when the incident occurred.

“I cried, and I called my mom “Mommy” for the first time in a long time,” Cunningham said.  “I was terrified and I felt like I was going to throw-up.”

The results of the wreck weren’t as severe as Cunningham expected, she said.

“I thought my mom was going to be really angry, but she wasn’t,” Cunningham said.  “She was just happy that I was safe.”

Cunningham said the only damage to her vehicle was a piece of the front of her car being broken off.

“My dad just painted the front with black paint so it wouldn’t be as visible,” Cunningham said.

Despite the minimal damage, Cunningham said that she took the wreck seriously and is doing her best to not let it happen again.

“The west parking lot is confusing, I haven’t parked there since,” Cunningham said.

Wrecks are inevitable, but they can usually be prevented, using certain measures, Cunningham said.

“Pay attention.  Be careful,” Cunningham said.   “Even though [students] think it won’t ever happen to [them], it can.”