You can’t control how your friend drives. You can control whether you’re in the passenger seat.

Some risks stop being yours to manage the moment you are inside them. How fast somebody takes a corner, whether they look at their phone at a light, how they are feeling after an argument: none of that is under your hand from the passenger seat. What is under your hand is the part that happens before the door closes.

Decide your own line early, away from the moment, and have an exit that does not require a speech. A text to somebody for a ride, or saying you will catch up later, is enough. You never owe anybody an explanation for getting out of a car.