Perri Nelson's Website 

More chlorine for the gene pool please

It should be obvious to the most casual of observers that certain activities are inherently dangerous. Driving at high rates of speed without regard for your surroundings is one of them. When I say "high rates of speed", I'm not talking about racing. We all know that racing is dangerous.

I'm actually talking about speeds that most of us are used to. Ordinary freeway speeds are actually quite fast in comparison to what our bodies and reflexes are designed to handle. For that matter, so are the typical speeds of urban arterial roads.

A person's body has a lot of momentum when it's moving at 60mph, or even at a more "sedate" speed of 35mph. A sudden stop at those speeds can have catastrophic consequences. When a body moving at 35mph strikes an immovable object (say a wall) at 35mph, part of the body immediately stops moving, and even rebounds in the other direction. Other parts continue their forward motion until they impact against the parts of the body rebounding from the collision.

Lots of ugly things happen to soft tissues encountering hard tissues in those circumstances. Hard tissues like bone are likely to suffer sudden structural failure when they impact other rigid objects with greater structural integrity at speed. In short, when you hit something hard while you're moving fast, things break and you can be seriously injured or even die.

The problem with all of this is that we're used to traveling at these speeds. We're so used to it that we don't think about what happens when a collision happens, mainly because collisions are relatively rare compared to the amount of time we spend hurtling along our roads and freeways.

Cars are designed to be very safe these days. Our steering systems are designed to naturally fall into alignment for straight travel with minimal effort. We have anti-lock brakes and traction control to make it harder to lose control of the vehicle when we react to conditions. We have air bags in front of us and to the side of us to cushion our tissues from impacts. We have safety belts to keep us from being thrown about as the vehicle loses momentum faster than we do during a collision. Even the structural frame of our cars is designed to protect us when things go wrong, crumpling expensively in just about every place except where we are.

So we get complacent about the dangers. We're so used to things going smoothly that we don't really consider that things can go wrong in seconds.

The Associated Press has chosen to remind us of this. From the Los Angeles Times:

YUBA CITY, CALIF. — A man who authorities say appeared to be driving while using his laptop computer died Monday when his car crossed into oncoming traffic and collided with a Hummer.

...

The couple in the Hummer escaped the 8:30 a.m. collision with bumps and bruises, Pettigrew said.
The crash, near the intersection of California highways 99 and 113 about 30 miles north of the capital, totaled both vehicles. It closed a section of Highway 99 south of Yuba City for about two hours.

Natural selection strikes again.

The stupidity of some very smart people never ceases to amaze me. Most of us have probably taken or even made a call on our cell phones while driving. Eating and drinking on the road are commonplace. So is arguing with the kids, listening to loud music, and driving aggressively because we're in a hurry. Most of these activities seem fairly benign, but they're just the tip of the inattentiveness iceberg.

I've observed people reading newspapers while driving. I've seen people driving with large maps unfolded, blocking nearly the entire windscreen of their cars as they hurtle down the freeway. I've seen people reading books propped open on their steering wheels while they drive ten or fifteen miles an hour under the speed limit, in the left lane.

I've watched people with portable DVD players watch movies while driving. Last year, I read about a couple of people that were arrested for watching pornography while driving (strangely enough, the articles were complaining more of the pornography being visible from other vehicles).

Recently I've heard about initiatives to make "texting and driving" illegal. Apparently some people send text messages over their cell phones while they're driving.

I recently bought a copy of Microsoft Streets and Trips 2007 with a GPS receiver for my laptop computer. I bought it for long trips in unfamiliar areas. On starting up the software with the GPS receiver operating a warning screen pops up. This popup warns you that operating a laptop computer while driving is a dangerous thing. At first I thought "what a stupid warning message, everybody knows that".

Now I'm not so sure.

Once upon a time I rejoiced in the advance of technology. It makes our lives easier. It enables us to do so many things we couldn't do before. It's meant to enhance our lives.

Too bad it doesn't enhance our brains.

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David responded with:

My daughter has proposed that every stupid driver should be required to surrender their vehicle. With something like 80=85% of cars off the roads, that'd leave the roads virtually deserted, Detroit outa business, gas prices plummeting and plenty of cars for good drivers to choose from... ;-)

Perri Nelson responded with:

You've got a bright daughter. You can tell she's thinking. :-)

Natural selection will eventually fix the problem for us. In the meantime we've got to deal with the traffic jams caused by morons weilding internal combustion engines.

I'm not sure I like your daughter's solution though. It would play into the hands of the socialists in charge of regional mass transit planning too well.