Oct 2024 Newsletter: Dignity of Risk Gets Rear-Ended

My daughter Lindsay was in a car accident on Labor Day. 

Most importantly, she was uninjured (as far as I can tell for a nonverbal daughter with high pain tolerance) because her caregiver saw it coming and “mom arm-barred” her. Unfortunately, the caregiver (and her car) took the brunt of the impact and couldn’t work for 3 days.

She was out in the community transiting from their morning destination to lunch when they got rear-ended pretty hard by a car with bad brakes and no insurance.  They were able to pull into a gas station and two San Antonio police showed up to take the report. We got lucky this time.

Lindsay’s safety and security weighs heavily on me every day, but from everything she can indicate, I believe she wants to be out of the house every day and engaged in her community as much as possible. And with that comes risk. Not all of it manageable.

Many in the disability community talk about the "dignity of risk," which is the idea that people with disabilities have the right to make informed choices and take reasonable risks to learn, grow, and live their lives.  I support that idea but as a parent of two adult daughters who cannot navigate the world independently, including our charming little Hill Country village, I also plan and prepare for as many contingencies as I can.

But so many things can go sideways big and small in an instant. What if the accident had been worse and the caregiver was unconscious? Lindsay is nonverbal and unable to communicate her name or condition. Would first responders been able to figure out how to reach me?

Or let's look back on an actual, seemingly benign, incident at a public park where some "Karen" called Park Police on me because she didn't like how I was allowing Lindsay to play on a climbing structure. The police asked me if I could prove that Lindsay was my daughter (I'm a tall white male, Lindsay is a 4'-6" Asian female). Fortunately we had IDs with matching street addresses, but what other proof were they expecting?

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