One of the saddest parts of my job is opening the multiple emails every day from the Oklahoma Highway Patrol detailing auto accidents around the state where at least one person was injured or killed.
There are far too many of these reports, too many people hurt or killed. All too often the reports have two things in common: distracted driving and no seatbelt usage.
A lot of folks will say it is nobody’s business but their own if they wear a seatbelt. They might think differently after a few dozen reports of passengers or drivers thrown from a vehicle during a crash, then being crushed under a rolling car. Or similarly killed or permanently disfigured, dealt a lifelong injury because they couldn’t be bothered to click their seatbelt.
Seatbelts are too confining, too tight. So is a coffin. Kids don’t like to be still in seatbelts or car safety seats. They lie perfectly still in a life flight or a hospital bed. Take it from someone who was around before seatbelts and baby seats. You don’t want to learn that lesson the hard way.
Just fasten the darn thing. It might save you from getting a ticket, and it very well may save your life.
As to distracted driving, how many times have you heard don’t text and drive? Don’t play with your phone, watch a video, read a map, or dig around for something under the seat. It’s tempting, I know. I have been guilty myself. And I have nearly wrecked doing it.
It only takes an instant to look at a text. Unfortunately, it also only takes an instant to go left of center, into oncoming traffic, and be too late to correct with both vehicles running at 60 miles per hour or more. And when one of those vehicles is a semi, the passenger car or light truck is going to lose. The passengers are going to lose, too.
It isn’t just our cell phones that distract us. It might be our radio, conversation, the love of our lives sitting beside us. Maybe we’re upset, or, most likely, thinking about the other things on our to do list.
Those things, in turn, make us want to hurry. So we drive faster, pass more recklessly and forget about road conditions. Hit a chuck hole at 65 miles an hour and even without an accident, you will regret it. Maybe it will only rattle your teeth or damage your car. But it could blow out a tire, cause you to go airborne and flip.
Running along at 65 after dark this time of year makes you a candidate for DBW – death by whitetail. Even if you miss the deer, jerking around on the steering wheel to miss it may send you into a culvert, fence or tree. Over correct from the maneuver and it is asking for the same sequence of events.
Don’t let your preventable death ruin the holidays for your family.
Take a second to fasten the seat belt. Put down the phone, hang up and drive. Slow the truck down and put your full attention on the road. Don’t make me read about you or your family in one of those OHP reports, please.