How accidents happen
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Twitter itI’m no expert on this, but it occurred to me today as I drove home that car accidents, like computer accidents, are really user error. The driver/user commits themselves to an action, expecting a certain result, and of course, they get a different result. It all boils down to proper evaluation and data gathering before a decision is made. It also helps to have experience, which some people don’t. And of course, it helps to have a certain natural gift for driving, which most people unfortunately don’t seem to have.
In most situations, things work out okay, because traffic is a flexible beast. I can’t really say the same about computers, because we all know about GIGO (Garbage In, Garbage Out). But traffic is really made up of individual cars, with individual drivers, each of them human, who can act and react to situations out there. Some can act and react better than others. If there are only a few dangerous drivers on the roads, the rest of the sane drivers can compensate for their folly. When things get problematic is when a lot of drivers want to do the same things, all at once. Accidents happen not during rush hour, but before or after rush hour.
Here’s the mentality of the pre-rush hour driver: “Okay, still not rush hour. Great, hurrying at work today really paid off. Gotta rush, gotta make it home before I hit rush hour. Get out of my way, you… You’re blocking my way home! Gotta make it home before rush hour!”, etc. Everyone’s in a hurry to get home quicker and beat rush hour. They’re swerving from lane to lane, annoyed by people who’re driving slower than they are, rushing, braking, accelerating, all in a mad dash to beat rush hour. And unfortunately, that’s when they’re not taking enough time to look at their surroundings. They’re only interested in themselves, willing to intimidate and make people get out of their way. They commit themselves to certain actions, and by the time they realize what’s about to happen, it’s too late to change course, and collide with another car, or the median, or a pillar, or… well, you get my point.
You can apply the same methodology to arrive at the mentality of the post-rush hour driver. And we all know what happens as it starts to rain, or when the road is icy, so I won’t cover those situations.
Before rush hour starts, there’s a lot of “Me, me, me!” going on. And then, as the rest of the drivers slowly get home during rush hour, they’re further slowed down by rubbernecking, as they get to gawk at some totalled car or a pile-up. Let’s face it, our roads aren’t built for racing, yet that’s how some drivers treat them. The irony of it is, they probably wouldn’t last 5 minutes on a real race track, yet they somehow think they’re hot if they can speed past some mom with a car full of kids on the highway.
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