HS on: Road-safety

Yesterday I caught a ride with my brother who was kind enough to take me to town. The trip was progressing, how should I express it? Quite rapidly. There is no other way to put this;  he was driving like an idiot, ABS klinging to keep traction, traction-control flashing in every corner and so on.
A slight bloodpressure drop aside due to me being scared shitless, I survived the horror of being driven around by my brother. That trip made one question remain though. "Why do so many people drive like idiots?", why attack an icy corner at high speed if you don't absolutely have to? To me it seems to be all too common here in Finland that every time winter arrives people just keep driving like it's summer and let the computers sort out the weather. So why throw out common sense and take on the treacherous weather driving like an imbecile right there on the computer-enforced limit?

Only one answer comes to mind. Safety. Yes, safety. So what has safety got to do with my brother being an idiot on the road?

Let me explain. The thing is, safety has become a huge sector in the world of cars, even to such extent that some people seem to think common sense has been rendered unnecessary by all that safetystuff. Nowadays there are these omnipotent three-letter combinations for everything; ABS, DSC, DSTC, ESP, DAC, DBC etc.etc. And that's all great! Except it enables people to be dicks on the road.

I've noticed that people feel like they don't have to pay attention to driving anymore because they have those mystery three-letter combinations to bail'em out for their incompetence. And that's true, they do bail people out effectively, but the point is they allow them the arrogance to get in trouble in the first place.And that's nowhere near preventive. That's just more accidents waiting to happen. In fact the whole atmosphere concerning road-safety feeds people's arrogance, it's all too much focused around the cars and other variables instead of the one true fallacy: our stupidity. Or more precisely our blindness for that.

The most preventive thing would be to smack those idiots in the face with a wet cloth and give them a car without any safety-equipment featuring a big read sticker in the corner of the windscreen saying "Caution: If you drive like an idiot and f**k up, you die.". As simple as that. Driving demands a certain level of respect for the machine. Humbleness for the forces of nature. And provided you don't want to die you will drive with respect in such a car. Just remember this the next time you have a go in your euro-box.


Passive safety is where it's at!



-HS