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Re: Driving Pet Peeves



Bruce Augenstein (rba@augenstein.ultranet.com) wrote:
: Any reasonable individual  who drives knows what is safe and what isn't.

Actually, that isn't true.  Personal experience is not an effective
teacher when it comes to safety.

Suppose, for example, that you consider one automobile/pedestrian
accident per driver-career to be an acceptable accident rate.  It is
unlikely that someone who has driven 20 years will have accumulated
enough experience to know whether their driving practices will achieve
that accident rate.  If you don't think that every driver should expect
to hit a pedestrian, then several lifetimes may not give enough
experience to make accurate judgements.

The vast majority of drivers consider themselves to be "above average"
(myself included :-)).  Yet most drivers have at least one collision
during their life.  Because the obstacles they most frequently encounter
are other cars (with drivers similarly armored), the consequences are
muted.  Road users who aren't armored (like me) find protestations of
safety from roadway users who regularly collide with other users of the
roadway less than reassuring, because the safety records of drivers
suggest that they will collide with us at least once in _our_ lifetime.

When I ride to work (typically 7-20 miles), I typically have to take
evasive action two or three times to avoid being struck by a car backing
out of a driveway, running a stop sign, making an unsafe left turn, etc.
This has become so normal for me that I don't even get upset about it.
It is so common that I would be hard-pressed to tell you how many times
it happens during any single ride.

--bob--


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