Dwain Northey (Gen X)

The Most Dangerous Weapon Most People Never Think About

I spend my workday behind the wheel. Hour after hour, mile after mile, I watch what has become a disturbing social experiment in selfishness. Every day I see people scrolling through their phones while driving two tons of steel at freeway speeds. I watch people weaving through traffic without signaling, tailgating until they’re practically in the back seat of the car ahead of them, blowing through red lights because waiting thirty more seconds is apparently too much to ask.

Then there are the people who seem personally offended by a turn signal.

You put your blinker on to merge, and instead of doing what driving etiquette has required for generations, they speed up to close the gap. It’s as if your signal wasn’t a request to merge but a declaration of war. They would rather risk an accident than allow another human being to get one car length ahead of them.

What happened to us?

Somewhere along the way, driving stopped being a shared responsibility and became a competitive sport where everyone believes they’re the only person on the road who matters.

The irony is that these same people rarely stop to consider what they’re actually controlling. A modern automobile isn’t just transportation. It’s a one- to three-ton machine capable of causing catastrophic damage in a fraction of a second. Most drivers don’t think of it that way, but physics certainly does.

A distracted driver staring at a text message isn’t just being rude. They’re operating a deadly piece of machinery while their attention is somewhere else. The laws of momentum don’t care whether you’re checking Instagram or changing the radio station.

Every time we get behind the wheel, we accept an enormous responsibility toward everyone else on the road.

Which brings me to another claim we’ve been hearing over and over.

ICE and the Department of Justice frequently justify shootings by saying an individual “used their vehicle as a weapon” or “drove toward officers,” creating an immediate threat that required deadly force.

If that were the whole story, it would certainly deserve serious consideration. A vehicle can absolutely be used intentionally as a deadly weapon.

But in several widely circulated incidents, publicly available videos recorded by bystanders appear to show a more complicated picture than the official narrative. In some cases, the vehicle seems to be turning away from officers rather than accelerating toward them. In others, gunfire appears to strike through a passenger-side window, raising questions about whether the vehicle was actually moving toward the officer at the moment shots were fired.

Those videos don’t automatically answer every question. A camera captures only one angle, and investigations should examine all available evidence. But they do make one thing clear: official statements deserve scrutiny rather than automatic acceptance.

That is precisely why transparency matters.

If officers routinely claim they were facing an imminent deadly threat from a vehicle, then body-worn cameras should help establish exactly what happened. They protect officers when their actions are justified, and they protect the public when official accounts don’t match reality.

Instead, many of the officers involved in these encounters are not wearing body cameras.

That absence doesn’t prove wrongdoing. But it does leave the public relying on conflicting narratives instead of objective evidence.

Meanwhile, every day on America’s highways, thousands of distracted and aggressive drivers unknowingly create genuine dangers with their vehicles. They aren’t thinking about using a car as a weapon, but their reckless behavior puts lives at risk nonetheless.

It’s a strange contradiction.

We tolerate astonishingly reckless behavior on our roads every single day, often dismissing it as “just traffic.” Yet in some law enforcement encounters, the mere movement of a steering wheel is later described as an intentional deadly assault—even when publicly available video raises legitimate questions about that characterization.

Whether you’re an ordinary commuter or a federal officer, facts matter.

A vehicle is capable of being a deadly weapon. That reality should make every driver more responsible and every use-of-force investigation more careful—not less.

Because when two tons of steel are involved, assumptions can be just as dangerous as reckless driving.