Year of Our Ford 99

The ‘elixir of life’ does not exist; it is inevitable that you will return to dust. Obviously, there is a litany of reasons why a person ceases electronic activity in their brains. However, the most common reason for this moratorium, for our age group, is an activity that is considered a privilege and not a right. The activity is highly advertised in a multitude of ways: the items that allow for the activity to occur in the first place, the horde of liquid substances along with services that allow the items to function properly, and the possible financial coverage if the item shall reach a destination that isn’t favorable to the party involved with the direct control of said item. It is a large reduction in travel time that has lead us to accept all the inherit risk of driving motor vehicles.

How risky you might be wondering; well thankfully our tax dollars have been put to good use in at least one regard. For the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (which is in the Department of Health and Human Services) is gracious enough to publish the leading causes of death for various age groups in this country. In 2003 for individuals aged 15-24, the leading cause of death was motor vehicle fatalities, including pedestrians, passengers, and drivers involved in accidents associated with motor vehicles. The actual number was 10,736; to put this in perspective, the next leading cause was murder with 5,268. Therefore, a person our age is 2 times more likely to die in motor vehicle accident than be killed by another person; the number expands to 2.7 for suicide, 6.5 for cancer, 22.7 for work related fatalities (including highway accidents (this is 2006 Bureau of Labor Statistics data, by the way)), and 61 for AIDS, just to name a few.

All right, I am sorry for the last paragraph being quasi-report like (I didn’t reference out of spite, use Google if you care). The only reason why I had to list them is to demonstrate how dangerous the daily activity of driving really is. I have heard many people worried about the safety of other modes of transportation along with dangerous activities they might embark on (white water rafting, sky diving, and such). Though truth be typed, it is more likely to perish on the car ride over to the locations where these activities are initiated, then the actual activities itself. I wonder how many people realize that.

There are also a number of other things I question about the driving of motor vehicles. For instance, why is the brake light the same color as the “car is moving light”. If I was designing a car I would try making it at obvious as possible a person was applying the break pedal. This would be achieved by manufacturing the break light to be a white light, the “back up” light would get switched to a green or something. I wonder how much money has spent in construction and maintenance of a useless blinking yellow light in the middle of a state road intersection. Nobody slows down in these intersections, due to having the right of way. Also, why does a school bus stop in the middle of a railroad track? It would make sense to stop before the tracks, but I have seen many buses stop on the actual track themselves. If a train is actually approaching, isn’t the bus driver just putting his passengers in more danger by stopping?

Naturally there are many other aspects of driving I wonder about (gasoline prices, highway billboards, tailgaters...), but all of these thoughts occur while I am driving. Usually, it is when I am on I-70 or I-465. So, I am being distracted by these thoughts, by the mundane task of driving, during a time when I am traveling at the highest speeds I drive. Most of these thoughts don’t occupy my brain recently, I mostly think about how much quickly I change the course my entire life by a simple turning of my wrist because every action has . . .