Unfortunately You Are Not Michael Schumacher

For the most part I like to think I’m fairly accepting of other people’s life choices.  There are not many areas where I feel that people's freedoms should be limited.  One of the biggest exceptions to that rule for me is when it comes to people’s right to make up their own mind about what they do and don’t do on the road.  You are not one person in a vacuum – you’re at the wheel of a deadly weapon manoeuvring it amongst other lives.  You owe those people a duty of care.  You owe them your care, consideration and caution.  You have no right to speed or drive while under the influence of drugs, alcohol or while fatigued.  And if you do any of those things my best hope for you is that you kill yourself before you kill someone else.

In the State Emergency Services I learned that 90 per cent of all accidents are a result of an optional behaviour – that means 90 per cent of all accidents could have been avoided and 90% of the people killed could have been saved.  Speed.  Fatigue. Alcohol. Drugs. Mobile phone. Recklessness.  I saw about a dozen crashes in my time with the SES and thinking back there was only one that was a genuine couldn’t-be-helped incident.  The rest were all stupid decisions that cost people money, freedom and life.

If I sound angry it’s because I am.  Mind you, I’m nowhere near as angry as the cops who attend accidents year after year.  Want to know why they fine you the maximum for being even a little bit over the limit?  Because they know how dangerous that little extra bit is and they’ve seen the result of people like you who were caught by circumstance before the cops got them.  It’s not pretty.  Quite honestly we’d all be happier if the majority of your body remained contained within your skin.

I have a favourite quote from Becker which goes something like, “People are idiots Margaret and if I don’t tell them they’re idiots then they won’t know they’re idiots and they won’t have a chance to improve themselves”.  It absolutely sums up how I feel about 90% of the population – but most of all how I feel about stupid drivers.  I’d love to tell them just how dumb they are.

It was blatantly obvious to me as we drove home from the Holiday from Hell that the road safe messages simply aren’t having an impact.  Either that or people have such a strong belief in reincarnation that they’re thoroughly unconcerned about shrugging off their current mortal coil.  Desperate to be like Brocky they’ve forgotten that he died at the wheel as a result of high speed. 

My favourite moment came when a young man with a car full of similarly young people in a tiny white biscuit barrel decided to overtake a line of seven cars stuck behind a truck (including us).  I thought he was going to overtake three cars and then pull in but he continued on towards the blind hill and, when a bus came over the top, he simply swerved sideways and trusted that everyone else would move out of the way for him.  Lucky for him the guy he nearly ploughed into saw him coming and had room on the shoulder to get out of his way.  You’d think he would have learned from that but twenty seconds later he did it again on a blind corner.  Genius of this kind simply cannot be taught, it’s a natural talent.

I am the first to admit that I am a total grandma on the road and thoroughly removed from the thought processes these people must be moving through*.  But occasionally I wonder what the hell these people are thinking and I wonder what I would say in response to their justifications…

1.)  I’m just as good as Brocky;  No, you’re not.  If you were you’d be racing professionally.  But keep it up and with any sort of luck you can be just as dead as Brocky**.  The difference will be that you’ll go down in history as an idiot instead of as a legend.  Unless you take someone else with you and then you’ll be a killer and an idiot.

2.)  I’ll get there heaps faster if I speed;  Well we all know the “will you get there at all” argument, so I’m not going to harp on that one.  But here’s some food for thought from my father-in-law.  He explained to me how he used to speed and drive a bit recklessly on his way to work, convinced he was getting there faster.  Then someone challenged him to time himself driving in his usual manner and then again while following the road rules.  Amazingly the difference in travel time was less than two minutes.  It was not a coincidence.  A week of each showed a similar result – on average he was getting there less than two minutes earlier.

Not convinced?  Here’s the maths.  We drove 240 kilometres from Bega to Canberra.  If we drove at 120 kilometres per hour for the whole distance – a consistent 20 kilometres an hour over the speed limit for the entire journey – we would get home in exactly two hours.  If we drove at 100 kilometres per hour we’d get home in two hours and twenty minutes.   Now this assumes a constant speed and no stops or breaks.  It scales down dramatically when you factor in normal driving conditions.  So really you’re risking your life, the lives of other people, your license and your money for about 10-15 minutes.

3.)  Everyone that sees me overtaking all these other cars in my awesome car thinks I’m awesome;  Nope.  Those of us obeying the road rules think you’re a grade-A moron and the rest of us – meaning other people like you – think you’re an idiot too because they’re convinced they can drive better than you and they know for sure their car is better than yours.  Which means that basically 100% of people witnessing your moronic behaviour think you’re a tosspot.  Except for your girlfriend/boyfriend beside you.  They probably think you’re awesome but chances are they haven’t been told anything about Darwinism.

4.)  I have great reactions.  If something happens I’ll be able to react in time;  Here’s the thing about the way your brain works (and I’m assuming for the sake of this argument that your brain does work, all evidence to the contrary).  It filters some of the information you’re getting while you drive to help you cope with what it perceives to be an unnatural high speed.  So you feel like you’re in control but the reality is that your body is not physically equipped to receive a message from the brain that will allow you to avoid an accident in time. 

Example;  Ten years ago I was a psychology student in university.  As a part of our study we did tests on reaction times and I happened to be one of the fastest in the class in all the tests we administered so I know my reactions, on average, are pretty darn good.  Three months later a guy ran a stop sign at 60 kilometres an hour.  I was doing 60 when he ploughed into me.  And while my brain saw him coming and knew there was going to be an accident, my body simply couldn’t react in time to do anything to save me.  This is a really hard concept to grasp until you’re the one looking at the inevitable grill of a Mack truck but you might like to just go with me on this one.  Your reaction times are of almost no consequence once you hit 60 kilometres an hour (That’s 40 miles for our American friends).

5.)  I’m not hurting anyone.  If I speed and I crash then the only person who dies is me;  Yeah.  No.  First of all, you’re not the only one on the road.  Second, law of physics – in a collision the faster moving of the two objects is the one that survives the impact best.  I remember one of the guys in the SES showing me a report (complete with pictures) about a car accident where a drunk guy in a Hilux sailed through an intersection at 120 and hit a Barina doing 60.  The guy was so paralytic when they dragged him out that he could barely walk.  He was convinced he’d hit a “f$#kin’ ‘roo”.  His bumper was mildly bent.  The Barina he hit looked like it had been fed through an industrial shredder.  He had mild whiplash.  Three of the four teenage girls in the Barina were dead.  The fourth was critically injured. 

That story, more than anything else, has always stuck with me.  The pictures horrified me and I know he would have seen them***.  I’ve always wondered what it would be like to drive home after you’ve been drinking, go to sleep thinking you hit a ‘roo and wake up with a hangover only to discover that you’re responsible for wiping three young people off the face of the earth and traumatising a fourth for life.  How do you live with that?

I don’t think that the road safe message will ever get through to some people.  Bullet-proof from youth or over-confident because they’re older and have avoided accidents right up until now – whatever the reason some people are just able to say “That won’t happen to me” and that’s an end to it.  But for the record – you’re an idiot.  And if I don’t tell you you’re an idiot then you won’t know you’re an idiot and you won’t have a chance to improve yourself.

*  Or not.  Maybe the assumption that they have thought processes is where I’m going wrong?
**  This post is in no way meant to be a swipe at Brocky.  The man was a legend and part of the reason that he was a legend was because he kept it on the racetrack.  When the great man was killed in that accident his team mate was tragically killed as well.  Brock's team mate was a trained professional who knew the risks when he got in that car.  He was not an innocent bystander caught in the wrong place at the wrong time...and therein lies the difference.
*** Trust me kiddies, those angry cops who fine you the max for speeding will also find a way to show you the damage you've wrought in all its technicolour gory detail when you finally come out of your medically induced coma.