| Sep 09 |
Traffic deaths drop, but families of 33,808 can’t celebrate
But before we celebrate, consider the families of those 33,808 victims. Their loved ones remain a statistic — and a grim one — and they cannot celebrate. And if they can’t, why can we? |
In 2009, fewer Americans died in 
| May 05 |
Nail-painting distracted driver causes fatal motorcycle accident
Apparently a woman in Illinois didn’t think driving required such focus. In fact, she thought driving was incidental to her primary task: painting her nails. And as a result, another woman is dead — an innocent woman who was stopped at a traffic light on her motorcycle and was wearing a helmet but nonetheless perished when a car driven by the nail-painter hit her from behind.
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How many wake-up calls does it take to drive home the point that driving is serious business — always? Driving requires your full attention, and that means keeping your hands on the wheel, your eyes on the road and your mind on operating a heavy vehicle at sometimes high speeds in complex traffic.| Jul 07 |
No way? Way! Wrong way drivers cause traffic fatalities
Unless they’re piloting a unicycle, they can’t pull into a parking space, because they’re pointed in entirely the wrong direction. But they can keep everyone else from proceeding, at least until they back up and get out of the way. Now really, how hard is it to travel in the right direction? Down is down, and up is up, right? And similarly, the wrong way is the wrong way. Yet people do it so often that you wonder how they avoid traffic fatalities. Actually, they don’t. Just over the holiday weekend, a wrong way driver who was also speeding slammed into an oncoming Jeep in West Harris County. The wrong-way driver died at the scene. The man who was driving in the right direction suffered serious injuries. |
You see it each day: You’re driving in a parking lot, in the same direction as other cars are parked and pointed, given the lanes and lines, and another driver enters from the other end going the wrong way.