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]

The Way We Talk About Car Crashes

I just read about a terrible accident in Ohio which claimed the lives of three young girls. In the article I read it said that the truck los control and hit a tree.

I realize that when the article was published, perhaps, evidence was not conclusive and so facts were not known. But I think it is dangerous territory we wade into when we say things like, "the car lost control." A more recent report from the Huffington Post says that speeding from the young driver was involved.

I cringe when local newscasters talk about 3 car pileups that will soon be cleared. In fact, I appreciate 91.5 FM's for that fact that their morning on air personality Dennis Bartel will note that he hopes the people are OK who are in the accidents. He is the only news figure in LA I have heard regularly acknowledge that there are people inside the "piled up" cars that prove to inconvenience us so much.

Cars do not lose control.

We have lost control.

We are driving around powerful, heavy, dangerous modern inventions that we are killing each other with.

That is the way the car should be talked about right now.

I wonder  what the inventor of the car, Mr. Benz, would think if he knew how many people now die daily in cars?

Why Car Commercials are Lame & Irresponsible

I have an issue with car commercials. They generally all look the same. Some sleek looking, shiny car is being driven very fast on a road where no one else is driving. They sometimes encounter hazardous things such as slick pavement, but not to worry their super safe tires or brakes will save you. Take this ad from Cadillac for example.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4gthAHKUE68&seo=goo_|_2012+Cadillac+Retention+You+Tube_|_Cadillac+PV+YouTube+-+Cadillac_|_Cadillac+Make+-+HV_|_cadillac]

With the windows rolled up you can't hear a thing outside of what is going on in your car. you can shut the annoying world out and just drive as fast as you want to. Because the rest of the world is filled with assholes but not you. You deserve to shut it all out and just drive really fast.

In this commercial from Mercedes everyone is seen smiling while they keep passing each other. Zipping along through  neighborhood and city streets. Ah, so cute.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/user/mbusa/featured?v=0ZPFcibSEpw]

Oh and don't worry because in tiny letters at the bottom of your screen we tell you that this was done on a "Closed course." Check out this commercial for Jaguar.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FvvQzXTwy1Q]

Have you ever been on a closed course, outside of bumper cars?

It's ridiculous.

The car companies owe it to the public to start making more meaningful commercials and responsible commercials.

There is so much focus on "how safe a car can be" how much "safe we've made it." People are buying into this.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pv7PbFrp6nM]

It's time they bought into a new train of thought.

A Post By Our Contributor Scott Marshall

This is the first post from one of our contributors, Scott Marshall of Safe Driver. Scott is father to 4, he lives in Canada. We are please to have him sharing his insight here with us. Raising my kids has taught me many things.

I always try to get them to realize that they should think of how their actions could affect anyone else. My parents raised me the same way. So far it’s worked out quite well. There’s often remorse when they do something they know is wrong.

That remorse usually means they make the proper decision before they do the action. That should keep them on the up and up as they go through life, don’t you think? Have you been raised to think about how your actions may affect someone else?

Recently while I was out driving with my son on the freeway, we came across a situation that affected my son emotionally.

While passing a slower vehicle on my left, that said driver decided to change lanes toward my vehicle. Since I teach my students at Young Drivers of Canada a technique that will allow them to notice slight movement of vehicles in a variety of directions, I was able to notice their movement quite early. Once I noticed their vehicle’s movement toward my lane markings I tapped my horn quite a few times with the hope of getting the driver’s attention and getting them to stay in their lane. It didn’t work so I ended up having to reduce speed and move partially onto the shoulder to my left to avoid the collision.

The driver who attempted to change lanes did absolutely nothing while I continued to tap my horn except continue into my lane; the space that my vehicle was occupying. A few moments later, they changed back into their original lane.

As we continued past them, my son and I glanced over to see what a driver might look like who seemed to care less about our safety.

The driver was someone probably in their mid-twenties and they were smiling as my son and I glanced at them.

Were they smiling because they were successful at cutting us off?

Were they smiling because they didn’t crash at freeway speeds?

Only they will know.

I tend to shrug those things off as I see them happen each week when I drive, but my son couldn’t do it. He started to cry. Yes, he was upset that the driver almost hit us and would have done so if I didn’t respond as I did.

He was more upset that the driver didn’t seem to have any remorse for their actions. He actually said to me, “I could have died and they didn’t care!”

Have you ever thought of how your actions could really affect other people when you drive? This careless and thoughtless driver didn’t seem to care about us and anyone else on the road, including themselves. Why not? Were they not taught these values as a child? It’s never too late to change.

The next time you’re driving, ask yourself before you make a driving choice how it could affect someone else; even the 12 year old passenger of the vehicle near them. Remember, you can mentally scar someone with your actions; not just physically injure them. It’s time to think before you act.

This article is for my friend; Lindsay Kavet. She has the passion that more people need to help make changes with road safety. – Scott Marshall The Safe Driver 

**Thanks Scott!

Our New Contributor: Shannon Noel Webb

Fix The Toaster is very excited to now have LA based mom, Shannon Noel Webb, contributing to our site. Shannon is naturally funny but she's serious about the impact of car safety. Well the people behind the cars, the whole sha-bang. Here is her first post.

Here is a list of the things I did this morning while driving in my car to work.  I cannot even believe it.  After talking last night and being uber aware I was still doing these things!  Habits run deep.  I like Fix The Toaster.  It is time to break our habits.  Jesus - look at this list!  I'm embarrassed, horrified and feeling fucking luck all in one!  I'm a good driver, a good mom, more responsible and ocd than I like to admit, I know people who have lost loved ones in car accidents, I bit my own tongue off in a car accident when I was 16,  I have been in a car accident where the car was flipped and totaled, and yet I STILL did the following WHILE driving myself to work this morning:

1. Read the liner notes on a 1987 Tom Waits cassette tape
2. Cleaned my cell phone headphones with a blanket that I dug out from under the seat and then sprayed with hand sanitizer
3. Loved on my dog who had found his way from the back of the mini van to the front seat
4. Fixed my twisted seat belt that was stuck in the contraption that is meant to make it tight should I be distracted and wreck
5. Searched for, found and turned on the seat warmer
6. Dug through my work bag for my cell phone charger and then searched for the outlet in 5 different compartments
7. Reached behind me to the back seat window and detached the built in sun shade so that my dog could stick his head out of the open window
8. Typed a note into my iPhone calendar and then set the alarm to remind me of this note later
9. Googled, on my iPhone, the address of my dog's groomer, google mapped it and then programmed it to guide me there from my current location
10. Ate and apple
11. Fought with the sports bottled top of my Sigg
12. Changed the radio station at least 3 times
13. Searched for and found the button on the radio that adjusts the bass.  Adjusted the bass.  Then the fade. Then the treble.
14. De tangled my new, gorgeous and very long necklace from my seatbelt
15. Dug through my wallet to find my hidden nail file/cleaner and then cleaned out my thumb nail
16. Checked to make sure that neither of my kids was hiding in the back of the car. They were not.  THANK GOD!

My only excuse is that I am not used to driving my min-van to work so it was somewhat new for me.  This would never suffice if, God forbid, I had hurt someone this morning.  And my children would certainly not have accepted this excuse if I had hurt myself, their Mommy.

Introducing Scott Marshall

Since I have become determined to try and make some difference in the amount of people dying in cars I've come across very few sites that have garnered a big following. Of course there is MADD, which has done amazing things. But what I was aiming for was a bit broader, as my mom would say "weirder." Just a general thought process that this is truly crazy that so many people die in car accidents and that we seem to have accepted this as, acceptable.

I have found one person whom I have really enjoyed reading. I recently emailed him and asked him if he'd be interested in becoming a contributor to Fix The Toaster and he has said yes.

So, Fix The Toaster is happy to introduce Scott Marshall.

He is a father to 4! He is a Canadian and his site Safe Driving offers up a lot of observation coming from a very good place. He is passionate about making the roads safer just as I am. He'll be posting in a couple of weeks.

Fix The Toaster is looking for more contributors, if you know someone who is passionate or knowledgeable about this subject please pass on our info to them.