Bad drivers make for risky roadways
Well, it happened again. I think I must be invisible. Unseen, unnoticeable, on my own street, in my Buick, in broad daylight.
Why do I say that?
Here’s the story.
One recent morning, driving down our tree-lined road to work, a small car approached from the opposite direction. As we closed the gap, the car began turning toward the street’s midsection. Alerted, I lifted my foot to the brake pedal, just in case.
Closing the distance, the car swerved into a driveway, giving me just enough time to muscle the brake pedal down with my foot. If I hadn’t, we probably would have collided.
My tires screeched sickeningly, emitting the sound you hope is not followed by a crash. Reflexively, I pushed the horn button. But the driver never acknowledged that I even existed.
For a second, I thought about stopping. I didn’t. Maybe I should have, but I can understand making a mistake. Yet, if that driver’s depth perception or judgment of distance is that poor, maybe she should not be on the highway.
Then I thought, maybe she was having a bad day. Maybe she had received news that robbed her of her focus. All sorts of scenarios popped into my head.
A death in the family, perhaps? Economic collapse? An emergency? Job loss?
Calmer, although slightly shaken, I traveled on, only to have some guy in a pickup truck pull out in front of me on another street. Granted, he gave me a little more time. But I still had to slow down, because if I had maintained my speed, we would have crashed.
At that point I was ready to pull over and examine my car to see if someone during the night had installed some kind of cloaking or stealth mechanism on it.
Muttering under my breath, I found my way into the parking lot at our office, unscathed, but stirred.
Unfortunately, experience has taught me to expect these occurrences.
My lovely wife tires of comments I make about how awful some people drive. But more and more I see people crossing the road’s centerline, neglecting to use a turn signal, turning the wrong way onto a one-way street, plowing through intersections where the light was clearly red as the proverbial beet, etc.
All of it brings to mind what I learned in driver’s ed so many decades ago about defensive driving. I will never claim to be the best driver in the world. But I pride myself that I work hard at being as good as I can be. Yes, I’ve had accidents (the count for 40 years on the road is less than the fingers on one hand), and most were not my fault (you have to take my word for that).
Which brings me to the point: What’s going on? Why are there so many apparently lousy drivers on the highways today? Is it lack of enforcement? Bad attitude? Drugs? Alcohol? Plain old inexperience?
You could suppose that if there are as many bad drivers as I proclaim, why don’t we have pileups on every corner? Well, I think it’s because there are as many good drivers as there are bad ones. Good ones watch out for what the other guy is doing.
Accidents (most of which could probably easily be prevented if some human would show some common sense and pay attention) happen either when a pair or more of bad drivers descend on one spot, literally at the same time, or a good driver just happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
I have written before that one solution would be to spur development of more public transportation, thereby getting people out of cars. Or, maybe more frequent refresher driving tests might be in order.
I used to think the most important part of any vehicle is the driver.
Now, I think it might be the airbag and a very loud horn.
I hope I’m wrong.
Have a good day.
James Pletcher Jr. is Herald-Standard business editor and can be reached at 724-439-7571 or by email at begin Jpletcher@heraldstandard.com Jpletcher@heraldstandard.com end
.