Everyone wants safer traffic on our roads

Everyone I talk to in my area says the traffic is terrible and so are the drivers. Well, what is it going to take-what really is it going to take?

One voice in the storm of opinion is the general public's conscience has to reach a new level and that level is: “The greatest potential for reducing crashes lies in the difficult task of transforming public and personal attitudes toward roadway safety. Citizens should consider roadway deaths along with the attendant suffering and economic costs as unacceptable rather than inevitable.”

Do you sometimes get that it is inevitable? You are not alone. This is the result of bashing up against a condition that is not well understood and repeatedly failing to get any type of desirable result. And so annually the total of roadway deaths continues to rise unabated.

I've inserted the above quote from the book: The Careful vs. The Careless Driver but the only reason I titled the book that way is that it has the words "care" in both parts. In reality, the title is The Expert Driver vs. The Inexpert Motorist. I'll further quote from the book: "And an expert driver both knows the attendant suffering and economic costs are unacceptable but more importantly the expert driver never drives distractedly. The Golden Rule.

Distracted Driver: This term needs to be defined or else it is meaningless to use it. I define it as any motorist who gets into, starts, and puts into motion a motor vehicle and who is also sick or tired or tipsy, or just had a bad argument, or on drugs of any kind legal or illegal, or who does other motions than handling well the speed and direction of his/her car, such as texting while driving, carrying on a heated argument, eating while the motor vehicle is in motion, fussing with their clothes or coiffure, slapping a child in the rear seat or trying to discipline a child while driving.

In any academy or law enforcement traffic schooling this definition should be made a memorized set of words and many examples of it should be shared by the students of the group as a group exercise. This would be and is a fundamental.

Don't try to tell me that we have a population of competent drivers when there are six million motor-vehicle collisions per year in the United States. That's a collision every 5 seconds. That's a raging pandemic all unto itself!

So what is it going to take to cut down the number of collisions and thereby the number of fatalities and major injuries?

Education? Sure, but what type of education? Certainly not the 'traffic school' type. That hasn't put a dent in the statistics and never will. Why? Because one doesn't learn adequately about dynamics by studying theory or principles. One only learns dynamics by dealing with the masses and velocities connected with what one is learning in real time. That's how pilots are trained to perfection in the synchronized flying squadrons known for their incredible stunts, aka The Blue Angles and the Air Forces Thunderbirds. It turns out that 95% of airline tragedies are traced to pilot errors. Fantastic when you discover that an airline pilot can't fly a jet airline without a minimum of 1,500 hours of training and this number of hours since 2010 is the same for his flying mate, his co-pilot. Closer to home how long does it take to train a chauffeur? Weeks if not months to train adequately.

Everyone I talk to or I am reading who is alive and alert and accomplishing their goals says one way or another that drilling the actions one is expected to utilize is the only method to attain proficiency. In his book

Thirteen Lessons That Saved Thirteen Lives*, John Volanthen says: "In many ways, I consider every dive {I make} as I would braking distances of the car I am driving. In that respect, the important factors to take into account are, 1) the car's braking ability; 2) the environmental factors in play, such as rain or ice, and 3) my mental alertness at the time, and whether I am tired, distracted or under stress. I know that these three details will affect my safety if I have to screech to a halt suddenly, in much the same way that my air supply, the type of cave I am exploring, and my stamina will affect my performance when working underwater."

*Volanthen is one of two highly experienced and knowledgeable cave divers who were crucial to salvaging the Wild Boars, a group of 13 Thai boys ranging from 9 to 16 years of age who were trapped inside a large cave when monsoon rains came too soon and closed off any escape routes.