Death

A friend was riding in the passenger seat of a new Buick Lucerne last month. The driver turned left across an intersection—and was met head-on by a pick-up trying to beat the light. All the big Buick’s safety features worked like a charm. No one in the car was seriously injured. In an initial effort to minimize the accident’s significance, the driver bragged that he’d been through much worse. Personally, I don’t think that’s anything to be proud of. Grateful might be a better reaction.

Whether we personally witness– or experience– the savagery of automobile accidents, we all know it’s a meat grinder out there. Yet we continue to drive, purposefully blind to the possibility that our life could be cut short at any moment. It’s easy to ignore the less immediately apparent ways the automobile might be eroding our life span: pollution, obesity or the aesthetic assault on our landscape. But how can it be so easy to disregard the quick and brutal way in which a pleasant afternoon drive can become a violent death? And why would anyone decide that their cell phone, make-up, or Big Mac is more important than their safe return home?

I suppose it’s human nature. Our talent for distancing ourselves from catastrophe, both mentally and emotionally, allows us to get on with life. Under the bright light of rationality, we understand that death is a certainty. But not now, we tell ourselves. Not here, not yet. We banish any thoughts of potential disaster and get on with the task at hand. And why not? Today’s safety-glassed, plasticized, brake-assisted, stability controlled, belted, bagged and crumple-zoned cars are safer than Ralph Nader could ever have dreamed. We can avoid or survive accidents that would have killed us a decade ago. We’re safer, and we feel it. And yet…

There may be a few degrees of separation between us and a road-related fatality, but there’s no separation between us and other accidents. We’ve all survived fender benders; many of us have walked away from serious shunts. Unfortunately, the experience leaves us shaken, but not stirred. Maybe we feel differently about people who die in auto accidents than we do about those who fall victim to crime because drivers make a free will decision to get behind the wheel. But none of us really expect to pay the ultimate price, do we? Like juvenile delinquents, we presume the other guy will foot the bill. And so they do– until they don’t.

I realize that humanity is one big social marketplace. If the automobile exacted a socially unacceptable human toll, we’d all stop driving. Instead, each of us calculates the odds against our own death, determines them to be acceptable, and ventures out onto the streets. There is no choice. Our society is built upon the car; we’re completely dependent on it. But that fact offers no absolution. We must face the reality that death stalks our highways, and take the appropriate preventative measures.

So, does this add up to just another trite and trifling reminder to ‘drive safely’? Maybe it does. But each driver needs to realize that we are playing God with the lives our passengers, our fellow drivers and ourselves each time we head out of the garage. Around 42k people are going to die on the roadways of the US this year. Maybe that’s an acceptable price for our society to pay in exchange for the personal mobility and clear economic advantages of automotive travel. But maybe the cost doesn’t have to be that high. We drivers treat the issue of fuel expense with deadly seriousness. It’s time to treat the expense in human life just as seriously.

Driver’s Ed instructors used to show aspiring motorists grisly images of horrific car wrecks, to make them appreciate the stakes involved. I’m not sure when the scare tactics stopped. I took drivers’ training in 1989. By then the practice was over. It was probably deemed ineffective or politically incorrect. Regardless, we weren’t forced to view the carnage. Of course, what you don’t see can hurt you. Shortly after I graduated from high school, a classmate was killed in an accident not far from my house. That afternoon changed my outlook on life — for a while. Like millions of other motorists, I eventually got over it. After all, it didn’t happen to me.

What would it really take to get drivers to change their potentially lethal habits? If teenagers can laugh off graphic films of accidental decapitations, if commuters can speed by roadside flowers without a second glance, how can we communicate the need to drive with vigilance, caution and respect? It seems that no matter what we do, Darwin and the Grim Reaper stay focused on their ghastly assignment.