Distracted
I've been reading the DOT Secretary's blog lately.* A while ago I read a post about a woman whose 5-year-old son was killed in a car crash.**
A few months ago, Cook was riding home at night on his bike, and he stopped at a light behind a bicyclist who was pulling a trailer with a kid in it. A truck came up next to them and the driver leaned out and yelled at the kid-puller that he was putting his child in danger. Neither Cook nor the kid-puller said anything, but Cook fumed all the way home.
I can't find the perfect statistics online, but it is true (transportation dorks tell me so) that driving a car is much more dangerous than riding a bike. Certainly car crashes are a lot more dangerous than bike crashes. Or pedestrian crashes.
I have been thinking about how dangerous driving is. As a non-driver for the last ten years, I've become increasingly afraid of cars. I never much liked driving, because I was always thinking about how FAST the car was moving, and how dire the consequences could be if something went wrong. I still think about that whenever I'm in a car. I think about it when I'm NOT in a car. One of Cook's coworkers learned recently that his 21-year-old daughter had just been killed in a car crash, and thinking of what it would feel like to receive that call just shatters me.
As an urban pedestrian, I've had my share of close calls and upsetting moments with cars. I am amazed by how blase people are about driving, how they do all sorts of stupid things. Not just talking on the phone, but putting on makeup, or fishing around in the backseat for a piece of gum or whatever. My buddy Ray LaHood has been talking a lot about distracted driving. The part that boggles my mind is that people assume that they're going to get away with the silly thing they're doing, and that they are lucky/amazingly-skilled enough to not suffer any consequences. My buddy linked to a series of ads about distracted driving that feature the texts that were sent or read by people the moment before they were killed or killed somebody in car crash. The texts say things like "Yeah" and the point of the campaign is to remind you to ask yourself if your text is worth your life or somebody else's. The 5-year-old I mentioned who was killed was hit by a truck driven by a man who was hunting for the unlit cigar he had dropped.
So this is my public service message, which will reach, I'm sure, almost as many people as Oprah's campaign. When you're driving, please just drive. If you've got to do something else, please think about whether, if something went wrong, it would be worth it.
(And please don't yell at bicyclists and pedestrians. I know they piss you off,*** and maybe they deserve to be yelled at for the terrible thing they surely just did, but you're all cocooned in tons of steel, and they're NOT.)
*Yes, I am aware that his staff probably write all of it. But it wasn't his staff standing on the table to talk to bike advocates.
** One of my favorite traffic safety things I've learned is that you're not supposed to call them accidents. An accident isn't preventable, but a crash is.
** They piss ME off, when I'm not being one of them. Today I nearly got run over, a situation that I didn't notice developing because I was reading a book as I crossed the street. Thank god I don't drive.
A few months ago, Cook was riding home at night on his bike, and he stopped at a light behind a bicyclist who was pulling a trailer with a kid in it. A truck came up next to them and the driver leaned out and yelled at the kid-puller that he was putting his child in danger. Neither Cook nor the kid-puller said anything, but Cook fumed all the way home.
I can't find the perfect statistics online, but it is true (transportation dorks tell me so) that driving a car is much more dangerous than riding a bike. Certainly car crashes are a lot more dangerous than bike crashes. Or pedestrian crashes.
I have been thinking about how dangerous driving is. As a non-driver for the last ten years, I've become increasingly afraid of cars. I never much liked driving, because I was always thinking about how FAST the car was moving, and how dire the consequences could be if something went wrong. I still think about that whenever I'm in a car. I think about it when I'm NOT in a car. One of Cook's coworkers learned recently that his 21-year-old daughter had just been killed in a car crash, and thinking of what it would feel like to receive that call just shatters me.
As an urban pedestrian, I've had my share of close calls and upsetting moments with cars. I am amazed by how blase people are about driving, how they do all sorts of stupid things. Not just talking on the phone, but putting on makeup, or fishing around in the backseat for a piece of gum or whatever. My buddy Ray LaHood has been talking a lot about distracted driving. The part that boggles my mind is that people assume that they're going to get away with the silly thing they're doing, and that they are lucky/amazingly-skilled enough to not suffer any consequences. My buddy linked to a series of ads about distracted driving that feature the texts that were sent or read by people the moment before they were killed or killed somebody in car crash. The texts say things like "Yeah" and the point of the campaign is to remind you to ask yourself if your text is worth your life or somebody else's. The 5-year-old I mentioned who was killed was hit by a truck driven by a man who was hunting for the unlit cigar he had dropped.
So this is my public service message, which will reach, I'm sure, almost as many people as Oprah's campaign. When you're driving, please just drive. If you've got to do something else, please think about whether, if something went wrong, it would be worth it.
(And please don't yell at bicyclists and pedestrians. I know they piss you off,*** and maybe they deserve to be yelled at for the terrible thing they surely just did, but you're all cocooned in tons of steel, and they're NOT.)
*Yes, I am aware that his staff probably write all of it. But it wasn't his staff standing on the table to talk to bike advocates.
** One of my favorite traffic safety things I've learned is that you're not supposed to call them accidents. An accident isn't preventable, but a crash is.
** They piss ME off, when I'm not being one of them. Today I nearly got run over, a situation that I didn't notice developing because I was reading a book as I crossed the street. Thank god I don't drive.
Comments