What is our culture’s obsession with speed? After 38 years as an accident claims adjuster, I’ll never quite understand it. In those 38 years I’ve seen some pretty gruesome stuff. And hundreds of fatalities later I can tell you, most of them were not caused by mechanical failure or weather or poor road conditions. Most of them were caused by human error, mainly speed.
About a week ago I recounted a humorous story about Grandma Wawa, who took 20 minutes getting into and out of the store and then whizzed by me, doing 60 in a 35 mph zone. Cute, right? What I probably never saw happened a mile further down the road when she hit an SUV with a mom taking her two kids to school. In two words…slow down!
Medical emergencies aside, where are we going and what is the need to get there two minutes ahead of schedule? You ever travel across state to a relative’s house? The first thing the men (and women at times) discuss is the trip and how long it took and how they could have shaved 8 minutes off the ride had they only taken I-63. No one ever talks about how nice a ride it was, how the trees were in bloom. We talk about the length of the trip, the potholes, roadkill and traffic. Oh, and some creep urinating on the side of the road behind his AMC Gremlin.
The other morning I was out early, as usual, headed to Northern New Jersey for work, travelling down a local road at about 5:15 am. Quiet, sun getting ready to come up, I’m doing 40 on our 35 mile per hour road, and there’s a guy in a Land Rover literally trying to drive into the bed of my pickup. After a million miles on the road, I still don’t understand.
What I used to do in those situations was to slow down and make the jerk wait…and wait…and oh, wait. Now I just pull over and let them pass, muttering as they go by, “I’ll see you on my next claim”.
One of favorite moments in life is having a crumb like that pass me, and a mile down the road see him pulled over by police, getting a ticket, and then slowing down, pointing and laughing as I drive past. Doesn’t happen nearly enough.
Unfortunately, multiple tickets and even DUI’s don’t stop a lot of these maniacs. And I really wouldn’t mind that much, the fact that they are in a hurry to die. The world would be a better and safer place without them. The problem is, in the course of events, they usually take a few innocent people with them. And for the speed nuts who believe in the afterlife, have you ever seen a movie about heaven where anyone was driving a car?
I should not insinuate that it is just men here. I’ve seen my share of soccer moms weaving in and out of traffic like they’re playing some sort of video game. We need to ask ourselves, “How important is it that we get there at 7:12 instead of 7:20?” Isn’t it enough that we just get there?
One of the problems is that a lot of people drive angry. And anger and cars simply don’t mix. How many people do you know, that in order to blow off steam, grab their gun, go out back and engage in target practice? In a lot of ways, what people do when they step into a vehicle angry, is very similar. The road is no place for rage. Go buy of those squeezy dolls whose eyes pop out instead.
For most of us, our experience behind the wheel before the age of 16 consists of bumper cars and go karts. So, one activity where the point is to crash into as many people as you can, and the other to go as fast as you can to pass as many people as possible. Is anyone else seeing a connection here? We get our license at 16, maybe 17, and then we are never again required to pass another driver’s test. How about a refresher exam say, every five years? Just to make sure we still have the skills. C’mon, let’s keep the DMV in the black for a few decades.
For as much as they have been useful, cell phones are such a significant part of accidents in our world today. Texting alone is horrible, but the general distraction is problematic. Driving over a bridge doing 65 is not the best place to take a call from home and hear that Fido just ran into the street and was run over.
Let’s see, who have we lost to car crashes? There’s Princess Grace of Monaco of course. James Dean. Princess Diana, Jayne Mansfield. Local sports figures Jerome Brown and Pelle Lindbergh. Comedian Ernie Kovacs, who lost control of his car while trying to light a cigar. What about General George S. Patton, a war hero, who survived World War II, only to die several moths later in a car accident. And astronaut Pete Conrad who walked on the moon. He traveled through space, walked on the moon, and made it back to earth, all without a dent, only to die on this planet in a car accident. Think about that.
I know a lot of people who drive aggressively. They’re mantra is that they are safe because, “they are in control”. What they are often forgetting is that the entire concept of driving is based around the expectation that the other person on the road knows what they are doing. They don’t. And when you drive at 70 and someone cuts in your lane 20 feet ahead of you, the response time is considerably less than when the same thing happens and you’re travelling 45. It’s simple math.
Many, many years ago, it wasn’t uncommon for a lot of people to go out in their car, just to take a drive. Really, that happened. Now, we drive with purpose. Get from point A to point B, and get there as soon as is humanly possible. That’s it in a nutshell really. Humanly possible. As humans, anything is possible. Except that we can’t bring people back from the dead. So if not even for your own sake, slow down for our sake. We, the rest of us who have to share the road with you.
Trapped in a Happy Life 