Does Your Car Represent Your Freedom?

Stumbled upon this great question, Does Your Car Represent Your Freedom, by Distracted Eyes which then linked to this thought provoking article.

Paul Altchley, the author of the post brings up great ideas about how the car did used to equal freedom. It always blows my mind at how people drive their cars as if they are in a movie and other people seem to hold little to no value to them.

While I can sympathize with a motorcyclist whose choice will most likely only affect them, the issue of distracted driving is not about preserving personal freedom at all. We don’t have the freedom to place others' safety at risk with our decisions. While we have a right to free speech, as Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. noted, we are not free to falsely shout, "Fire!" in a crowded theater. Likewise, while we are free to text, we are not free to text when doing so significantly increases the likelihood of killing someone else on a public roadway. No one relishes the idea of giving up their freedoms, but on the other hand, we have demonstrated that we are willing to tolerate quite a bit of regulation in exchange for an increase in safety. Few other exchanges of “freedom” for “safety” match the benefits to be gained by ending distracted driving.

How about you, does your car represent freedom to you?

Tailgating Kills. Are You a Killer?

According to Wikipedia: Approximately one third of rear-end collisions involve tailgating.

I live in a place that requires me to go down a huge hill, basically a mountain. It's a freeway and it's surprisingly uncongested for LA.

I have to stay in the right hand lane as the freeway I need requires one to exit on that side.

This leads a bunch of people in the right hand lane, the slow lane, all going down a mountain on a freeway. Fast.

I am comfortable going between 60-65. I'm pretty sure the speed limit is 65.

You would not know it from the cars whizzing by me. Fine let them whiz. I can't control them. But what really rattles me is when someone gets behind me and tails me on this freeway. I become stuck.

I need to exit so I need to stay in that lane. They say the safest thing to do is you are being tailed is to let the person pass you. But it would be unsafe for me to get over and then get back over again.

I believe that if you are tailgating you are saying F#$% you to the lives in front of you. Because if an incident occurs where the car in front of you has to stop, you will, 100% hit them. And if you are going down a freeway, downhill, at 70 miles per hour you will really hurt the lives in front of you and possibly many more from the sadness they would feel at the loss of life.

I think even the tailgater would probably suffer huge remorse from killing someone.

Remember the 3 second rule from drivers ed? Why aren't we adhering to it? My cousin was in a crash here on the LA freeways this year and she said it was incredibly frightening seeing all of the cars scramble to stop.

Since I have to go on this freeway a lot I've wanted to place a bumper sticker on my car, much to my husband's horror. I bought one that says:

Tailgating Kills, Please Leave Space

I like this one someone home made.

I haven't had the cajones to put it on my car but I think I might start making my own revolving bumper stickers. I want people to really get where I'm coming from.

Do you tailgate? Is it a problem in your area?

The faster we go the longer it takes to stop.

I don't want to crash at 70 MPH, do you? Have you ever been hit at 20MPH and said, "Wow, that hurt?" Imagine crashing at 50, 60? Imagine your kids crashing at that speed.

Don't we want to stop in time?

Do you value life enough to leave space? Daily I feel as if I'm surrounded by heartless, angry people on the roads, but I believe they just have not connected the dots yet. Or we as a society have forgotten the very basics.

Automated Cars will Save Lives, Not Before We Lose A Lot More Will This Happen

Automated cars were first introduced to me by my brainy husband. Cars that you can get in and will essentially drive us to where we need to go, no steering or foot on the pedal required.

Sound scary or weird?

Well how is this for both as David Strickland, the head of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, points out: human error was a factor in about 90 percent of the more than 33,000 traffic deaths in 2010.

90 percent!!!!! We have nothing to lose.

Strickland says, “We have the chance of … saving thousands and thousands of lives as” cars in use today are replaced with automated vehicles, he said.

That is hopeful.

I don't see it happening for a long time due to government sticky tape and red blooded Americans saying, I'm an American, it's my right to drive my car, dang gummit.

So let's say it passes in 10 years, we will only lose about 1/2 million more people to car crashes, because that's how many we have lost roughly in the last 10 years.

If it passes in 40 years, we will lose a mere 2 million more people to car crashes.

My anger aside, it is hopeful and you should click on the link to the article. As the article notes it will be great for the elderly, which we will probably all be by the time this passes. Sounds great to me!

I'm learning as I go and it turns out one of the inventors of the driverless cars is fueled by his passion to save lives. Google's Sebastian Thrun speaks about it here.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bp9KBrH8H04]

Malibu Mom

A very funny comedic, Susanna Brisk, who lives in Malibu recently blogged about her un-funny car accident. 

Susanna is a mother to two and she is a very crass, funny mom, so to her hear her write very sincerely about the scare made me feel for her.

Thanks for sharing Susanna! I too will try to focus more while driving like you say here:

So I am never, ever changing the station/calling on the phone/turning on iPod/putting on mascara/changing my underwear while driving again (what? Shit happens.) No more. I got a pretty cheap wake-up call considering… If you had seen the car you would be shocked that anyone had walked out of it almost without a scratch.

It’s incredible the lengths G-d will go to, to make me feel lucky to be alive.

6,484 People Die in LA Every Year in Car Crashes

Living in Los Angeles I am faced with driving around millions of people daily. I have seen far more accidents then I ever did living anywhere else. It is a part of our daily lives here.

After driving by the accident on the 134 West last night I couldn't help but think of the people in those cars, their soft flesh possibly hurt. Their spirits possibly gone.

Because their fragile bodies could not handle the impact of going, say 70MPH to 0 in a second.

I just looked up how many people die in LA  each year.  6,484 people die in Los Angeles every year in due to car crashes. That is a lot of people.

You argue, yes but there are a lot of people living in Los Angeles. True, but should we just sit back and take it that, that's a given? Car crashes are not cancer. We don't need to do a ton of research going after then unknown. Sometimes I feel like we are just a bunch of fatalists regarding car crashes.

There are some answers.

There are ways to help lower the amount of deaths. But are we willing to sacrifice 15 minutes here or there? Will the car companies let new advances that are available now happen?

Check out how many people die in your city here.