So often horrible events take place on the road, and in response we shake our heads, go tut! tut! and say, “well, that’s just one of those things!” And then we say to the surviving members of the grieving family, “now you need to go on with your life.” I have been reflecting on a number of such situations and I must admit I have no idea how surviving family members are supposed to do that.
In the United States, the great comedian Bill Cosby and his wife lost their only son out of five offspring. Their son was driving his very expensive car one fateful night when he had a flat tyre. While changing the tyre another person came upon the scene, and in what was described as an opportunistic crime based on the assumption that since this was a driver of such a high value car there must be other valuables for the taking. The robbery went horribly wrong and the son was killed in the process. Mr. Cosby makes magical comedy. How on earth he can continue to find humour in anything when we can reasonably be sure that not a day goes by without recurring thoughts of their overwhelming loss.
In my own country, Bermuda a young man from a family whom I know well was someone with so much promise. He was an outstanding student, a fine athlete, a very handsome person with all the charm in the world. One day he pulled into a petrol station on his off-road motorbike and there he lowered the side stand that allowed the bike to rest at a side angle. Having refuelled he set off and made a right turn exiting the property. However, he made a deadly mistake. He failed to return the side stand to its folded position. There traffic circulates on the left-hand side of the road, and as he approached a left-hand bend he leaned left whereupon the side stand dug into the ground bringing the bike to a sudden stop throwing its rider headlong into an oncoming truck. He was killed instantly.
I doubt that anyone on that island has ever forgotten. I know his family never will. And neither shall I. That’s why I recommend to any rider of a motorcycle with a side stand arm that swings down and has to be swung back up, remove that killer piece now. The more high-end motorcycles that have them also have a failsafe switch, so that if the rider forgets to put the stand in the up position, when he puts the engine in gear it will stop running. The rider cannot get underway until the situation has been rectified.
Do we say to them, “well, now you must try to go on with your life.” What life?
On one of Spain’s interurban roads a family of five were returning home after a day out. The road they were travelling was one of two lanes in opposite directions. Ahead of them loomed a gentle bend in the road to the left. Apparently what happened next was the following scenario: a car being driven by a young man with his girlfriend as passenger came round the bend at top speed and the centrifugal/centripetal forces were too much for him to keep the car under control at such speed and in his lane. Consequently he ran head-on into the family car at such force that all concerned were taken from the scene to arrive at hospital DOA. (Dead on Arrival). One young man’s folly has affected forever too many families to contemplate.
Just one of those things? Certainly not!
Finally, another young man, another tragedy. This driver set out at one end of a residential road where he drove at speeds topping more than three times the posted limit. Near the other end of the road a child set out to cross the street. Had the driver kept to the speed limit, which was set for the good reason that this was a residential area, that child would have crossed safely and in all likelihood he would be alive today, growing up to fulfil his promise. Instead he was mown down like a blade of grass by a speeding machine that travelled the distance in a mere fraction of the time it should have taken. Some people were heard to say that it was such a shame, but it was just one of those things.
What do you think?
Death on the roads? It doesn’t have to end like that! Speed kills!
Stay safe! Drive safely!
Copyright (c) 2007 Eugene Carmichael
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