The Dangers of Rural Driving

The picture you see above is of the intersection of highways 335 and 35, in central Saskatchewan, Canada. This could be an intersection in any rural part of the world. Instead, it is the intersection where the Humboldt Bronco’s bus tragedy happened, a tragedy which, at the time of this writing, took 16 lives when a bus carrying a junior hockey team collided with a semi. This article isn’t about that accident, as we are likely still months from the findings of the investigation. Instead, this article will be about something more general, but no less important: the dangers of rural driving.

Rural driving of course means any driving that is outside of the city or towns in any country. To be fair, all I can truly write about is rural driving in the United States, as that is the only country that I’ve driven in. But from Google Earth images, the roads, lights, and markings all look similar between Canada and the United States, so I’m confident the information I present here today can be of some value to people both in the U.S., and our great neighbor to the north.

The first thing that a driver notices about rural driving is that there is normally far fewer people and cars around than when driving in the city or town.  This can be a good and a bad thing. It’s good because it means that there are fewer people out there driving stupidly, and fewer people to pull out in front of you or do any of the myriad of annoying driving practices that occur every day in the city. It also means less traffic accidents overall, because if you have less cars on the road, you automatically have less chance of an accident occurring.

But it’s also a bad thing. Less people on the road can lead to people adopting a cavalier attitude towards their driving and safety. If a driver sees few people on the road, that driver might think that he or she are  safer because of that, and because of those fewer people, he or she doesn’t have to focus as much and watch their speed as much while driving. It can also lead to more law breaking, as do stop signs and stop lights really exist if no one is around to give you a ticket for running them? It sounds like an absurd expression, but it is the mindset that many in rural areas have when they come to a stop sign in the middle of nowhere. There’s no chance to get a ticket for not stopping, so why stop? (To be fair though, urban drivers will tend to have the same mindset if they see a red light in the early morning hours and don’t see anyone around, so it’s more human nature that we are looking at here, than rural drivers.)

Now of course, I’m not painting with a broad brush here. The vast majority of rural drivers, just like the vast majority of urban drivers, are good drivers. They wouldn’t intentionally run a stop sign, or go significantly faster than the speed limit at places where it’s dangerous to do so. But we all know that there are drivers everywhere who do these things. In rural areas, the danger is multiplied because of the mindset that can exist in some people of not being watched, and therefore anything goes. Not everyone does this, but enough do that it is worth being cautious in rural areas.

To illuminate this a bit more, let’s imagine a scenario. You have a rural driver who regularly runs the stop sign on the way to the gas station a few miles away from his house, because normally no one is coming the other way, or it’s fairly rare. So this driver runs that stop sign, or rolls through it on a regular basis. But imagine a day where you are driving through this person’s area, maybe on vacation or maybe to see a relative that lives in another state. While you are driving through this person’s area, they could just run that same stop sign when you are coming up to it. Since the driver usually runs the sign with no consequences, he won’t worry about it, and might drive right in to your passenger seat. And since most vehicles in rural areas are trucks, you would be in big trouble if you were in a small sedan.

Animals are another concern in rural areas. I’ve mentioned it in other blog posts, but I’ve been driving on a country road, and drove past elk herds that were thirty miles long. If a large animal like an elk darts out in front of your car, you are either going to be seriously injured, dead, or have a hefty repair  bill coming your way. Just like with the potential rural driver who isn’t paying attention to their route, you also need to be aware of the dangers of animals, and how they are all over rural areas. If this seems hard to believe, just take a look at all of the animal crossing signs you see while driving through rural areas. They are all over the place because the animals are, too.

The most important thing, though, is to watch your speed. If anything, you need to be keeping a closer eye on your speed in rural areas than you do in urban ones. The lack of people around will entice you to go faster. An empty road will beg you to smash that throttle down. But be careful. That empty road could have a police officer or accident scene around the corner. That lack of people could hide a landslide with rocks the size of basketballs which will destroy your tires.

Speaking of landslides, they are of course more common in rural areas, and they can stick around longer, too, because it might take road crews longer to get to them. While I was driving for GM, I recall a situation where there was a spherical shaped rock about the size of a small car tire that was in the right lane of a country road, and was there at least three days. And it could have been there longer, it‘s just that I didn’t drive on that road after three days had gone by. So anytime you are driving while it’s raining, or you can see standing water on the side of the road, it’s a good chance that there could be rocks in the road. This is going to be especially true for the right lane, so if you are on a four lane road, or your side of the road has two lanes on it, use the left lane if there is a possibility that there could be rocks in the road. In my experience, I have seen rocks end up in the left lane of a road, but they are much smaller and less damaging, usually, than the rocks that end up in the right lane. Be careful, though. Left lanes are the faster lane, and you are very likely to have a person coming up fast if you are using the left lane. As always, keep focused, and keep your speed down.

What all of this means is that you cannot let your guard down while driving in rural areas. And I get it, it’s easy to do. You are driving through windy mountain roads, dazzled by the mountains and the trees around you. The area is so sylvan and so beautiful, that the very notion of it being dangerous seems preposterous. But that kind of thinking lowers your focus, and possibly just when you need it. So bottom line: drive just like you’d drive in the city. Stay focused on all aspects of the road and the people around you. Don’t get lulled in to a false sense of security because of the beauty of the area, and keep an eye out for animals. Above all, keep your speed to where it should lawfully be in these areas, and your chances of a safe drive in rural areas will be much higher. Until next time.

The Tragedy of the Humboldt Bronco

On Friday, April 6, 2018, at around 5 PM, a bus, carrying the Humboldt Broncos junior hockey team, collided with a semi truck carrying a load of peat moss near Tisdale, Saskatchewan, a town in the central east part of the province. In the end, fifteen people died, with fourteen injured. It was an accident that touched the heart of every Canadian, and every hockey fan in the world. At this point, no one knows what truly happened, and no one has been officially blamed. The driver of the truck was taken in to custody right after the accident, but then released, so it’s not likely that he was drunk or on drugs, but again, no one knows for sure. Once the cause of the accident is known, I will write an in depth article about what the accident can teach us as far as driving. But while we wait and grieve for the kids (around 15 years old, most of them) and the adults who were taken in this tragic event, here are a few lessons we can all take from this tragedy.

·         First, our time is limited on this planet. Love the people in your life, tell them what you want to tell them, because you never know when you will not get another chance to do that.

·         Travel over the open road is still inherently dangerous. While nothing is known yet, and no blame can be honestly leveled anywhere, it would do us all well to remember that the road, even though largely tamed with anti-lock brakes, emergency steering, and emergency braking, can still kill. We should not take the danger of driving for granted.

·         Intersections still remain the most dangerous part of any road, anywhere. More accidents happen there than anywhere else, by a wide margin. Again, while nothing is known for sure, it can be seen from the picture above, that this accident happened at an intersection. It is likely that someone lost their brakes, or did not brake at all, and that caused the carnage. Just like we shouldn’t take the danger of the road for granted, it would do us all good to remember that intersections are very dangerous places, and our guard has to be up twice as much at an intersection than it is on an open road or freeway.

·         Not only do you need to be careful around intersections and just in general, but you need to be careful in rural areas. I used Google Street View to take SK35 up from Tisdale, all the way to SK335. (SK 35 and SK 335 are highways in Saskatchewan. In Saskatchewan, highways are denoted with an SK before the number.) It was the intersection of 35 and 335 where the accident took place. That area is VERY rural. The Google Street View was taken in 2013, so it’s possible much has changed, but just west of that intersection is an unguarded railroad crossing (I don’t know if trains use that track or not), and there are stop signs on SK335, with flashing red lights to warn drivers that they need to stop. That’s it. Rural roads lull people to complacency because not much happens on them. You can go for miles and miles, hour after hour, with neither the road, the scenery, nor the situation changing much. Trust me, I used to have to drive from Arizona to California, and there are large stretches in the California desert which are like this. This lack of difference can be dangerous, because it can make the driver think the threat is lessened. This is possibly what caused the actor James Dean’s death,  as he was also in a rural area in northern California, driving fast, not worrying about anything, that was, until a college student pulled out in front of him, killing him instantly when the two cars collided. The lesson is to keep your attention and focus up just as much in rural areas as you would in the city. These roads are just as dangerous-more so, because people don’t worry about anything happening, because it rarely does. But when it does, as in this bus tragedy, it can be horrible. I’m not saying anyone involved in the accident lost focus, just that it’s easy to do in a rural area.

·         Accidents, like life, are very capricious. From what I understand, the truck driver walked away with nothing but some cuts and bruises, while the first twenty feet of that bus are completely gone. Not just wrecked, crushed, or destroyed, but they don’t exist anymore. Accidents are like that. You will have situations where a rock goes through a windshield, and goes through at the exact right time and place to hit someone and kill them. Or you can have a situation like I saw at the GM Proving Grounds in Mesa, Arizona, where a dump truck, fully loaded and doing a test that had the truck doing 80 miles per hour, blew a tire and ran completely off the road, tumbling  over as it went. I saw the truck the next day. The passenger side compartment of the truck was completely leveled. If you know trucks, you know that the cab, where the driver sits, is above the hood. This truck no longer had a passenger side that was above the hood. It was at the same level as the hood, or below it. But if you looked at the driver’ side, it just had a smashed windshield. There wasn’t even a dent on the top. That driver walked away, too, and was actually back to work the next day, to the shock and surprise of all of us drivers.

·         This tragedy has shown the greatness of people all over the world. What one person started doing, and sent a text out to a buddy explaining, is he left a hockey stick out on his front porch right after the accident. He told his buddy that he left it out in case any of the Humboldt players who died needed a stick. This caught on, and people all over the world started doing it. You will see sticks now outside of people’s houses anywhere people play hockey. This is just another example of how great and heartfelt people are.

·         Another example of greatness is the generosity shown after the accident. A GoFundMe page was set up to support the victim's families and the survivors. They were hoping to raise two million dollars. After a day, they raised a million and a half. According to the Go Fund Me website. In four days, 90,000 people donated over 8 million dollars. The figure they were hoping for was 4 million. This type of  generosity was seen after 9/11, and for the hurricanes that hit Texas and Florida in 2017.  Humboldt is just another example of how generous people are, and how much they want to help.

·         And above all, be nice to each other. Life is too short for grudges, jealousy, gripes and negativity. Be kind to all, and do your best to make someone else’s day a little better, in whichever way you can.

Until next time…

GM Stories: The 15 MPH Ball and Chain

This is the closest I can come to a picture of what the car looked like. Since it was a test vehicle, no pictures of it were allowed.

One of the hazards of being a contracted test driver for a company, which I was, was that there was always the possibility of your assigned car breaking down, or setting a check engine light, both of which meant your shift was essentially over. If you were lucky, the bosses might have some cars to wash or some water jugs to refill around the proving grounds, to get you close to getting a full day’s work in, but usually when you broke down, you had to go home.

I was in just such a situation one night during the late summer, early autumn. I had a car that was so normal I don’t even remember what it was. But after lunch, the car set a check engine light. I took it to the garage, and the mechanics shut it down. I went back to the office, and asked if they had anything else. I expected them to tell me no, because this was the time of year that testing started slowing down, as temperatures were starting to drop as summer slowly died, and high temperature testing was what the GM proving grounds in Mesa were all about.  To be honest though, being Arizona, nothing slowly dies. Summer here goes from the end of April, to the beginning of October. One day in April, it will be nice, sunny, and warm. The next day, it’s over 100 degrees. One day in October, it’s 105 outside. The next day, the high is 65. I guess that’s why they call it the desert!

I was in luck though. One of my bosses said that two hours ago a car had been called up for what he called an engine break-in. Now these could be fun, as depending on the engine, you might get to exceed 100 miles an hour on the circular track. Or you might get to bring the car up to 50 miles an hour, and keep it there for three hours while you drove around. You never knew until you got in the car.

So I got my assignment, and the location of the car, and walked over to the garage. I remember it being a gorgeous night (I was working third shift at the time, so it was about 4 to 430 in the morning when this happened), but the car was far more gorgeous. This was a legit, honest to God race car. It even had the five point harness-type seat belt that racers use. (A five point harness is called that because there are five seat belts: two go over the shoulders, two go around the waist, and then there is the submarine strap, which comes up between the driver’s legs to prevent him or her from sliding under the belts in the case of a crash).

This car had an 800 horsepower, V8 engine, with a six-speed, manual transmission. To put that in perspective, the cars that most of us drive hover around 200 horsepower. Most NASCAR engines put out about this amount of horsepower, or a bit more. Most Formula One cars put out about 200 horsepower more than this car I was about to drive. The term kid in a candy store could never have been more appropriate to describe my feelings.

My head was buzzing. I knew I wouldn’t be racing this thing, as we were never without strict orders that had to be followed regarding how the cars were driven, or we could seek other employment: that’s how serious they were about the cars. But I was expecting to maybe get out on the track and stretch the car’s legs, as they say in racing (meaning to drive it fast for a good amount of time).

I should have known something was wrong when I noticed the mechanic grinning at me. I asked him, like I asked all mechanics when I picked up a car from the shop, if there was anything I should know about the car. He said no, just read the paper that was in the car.

I got in the car, and there was the paper sitting on the front passenger seat. The paper detailed how this was a special car, meant to test a special part of the engine, and that the first few days of its life on the proving grounds, which began that night, were to be a break in. So because of that, I had to run what they called a Granny schedule. Granny schedules were schedules we ran that kept the car at a maximum of 15 miles per hour. My job was to drive this 800 horsepower best, this tiger that was waiting to get out on to the track and roar, around the building area, never exceeding 15 miles an hour.

While that might sound disappointing, and it was, it was actually pretty hard work. A car with an engine that big tends to have an itchy trigger finger when it comes to the gas pedal. The same amount of force that you might apply to the gas pedal to get your car away from a green light, maybe maxing out at 40 miles an hour after a quarter of a mile of steady cruising, would send this car up to 100 miles per hour or more easily if the driver wasn’t paying attention. That, and because this was essentially a race car, it had a manual transmission, as all race cars did back then. With this kind of transmission, and an engine that powerful, stalling was a real possibility, and if I remember right, I did stall it a couple of times as I was starting to drive it. I had to spend the rest of my shift alternating between idling the car, not letting it stall, and just barely, lightly, blipping the gas pedal to keep it going. I won’t lie, I had a cramp in my right calf that didn’t go away for two days after that night.

So for about three hours or so, I drove the car around the building area, never going on any of the tracks or roads of the proving grounds (because 15 miles per hour is too slow to be allowed on any of the roads). When I saw that my shift was over, I returned the car to the garage, got the mechanic to sign my sheet (something required to prove that I didn’t just take a nap for the rest of the shift, but actually worked!) and made my way back to the office. I’ve always been curious what that car was actually testing. All I know for sure is that what it truly did test: my right calf muscle! Until next time…

When, How, and Why to Use Hand Signals When Driving.

Turn signals, or the lack of using them, might be the most maligned part of driving. The turn signal stalk is on the left side of the steering wheel column, ready to be pushed down, or pulled up, to indicate whichever turn the driver plans to complete. Yet we all know that there are many, many people who don’t touch that turn signal stalk to indicate a turn, either because they don’t think of it, or they are too busy being on their phone or being distracted in a myriad of ways. Be that as it may, there are situations where a driver has to use a turn signal, but not the electronic ones that came with their car. This article will tell you when to use hand signals to indicate what you are doing while driving.

The picture above shows the three types of hand signal. An arm pointed straight out indicates a left turn. An arm hooked up at the elbow indicates a right turn. And finally, an arm hooked down at the elbow indicates slowing or stopping.

Now that the signals are known, when would you ever have to use them? Well the first situation would be if there was ever a time when the electronics in your car stopped working. I have heard of older cars having short circuits in their electrical system, meaning that neither the headlights nor the taillights worked at all. In this instance, the only way to indicate your turn or slowing is to use hand signals. It is a rare occurrence, but it does occur, which is why almost every state driving manual in the U.S. has a section on hand signals. You won’t always need them, but you need to know what they are, and how to use them.

Other situations where you might need hand signals? Let’s say you are towing a trailer, a trailer without lights, or a trailer in which the lights are broken or the wiring harness is not in good enough shape to mount to the car. The fact that you shouldn’t use a trailer in this condition should go without saying, but we all know that there are many people would still take a trailer like this, so let’s talk about it.

Say the trailer blocks the taillights on the car or truck that is towing it. The only way you’d have to let someone know behind you that you were turning or slowing is to use hand signals. And don’t think this is a rare thing. I remember my first year working midnight shift for GM, back in 1996. I was driving to the proving grounds at around 11 PM. I was going probably 50 M.P.H. (the speed limit on that road), or maybe a bit more than that, and was thinking of nothing but getting to work and getting a good night’s worth of driving in (and getting there before I would be counted late, which accounts for the driving maybe a bit more than 50!). That is when I saw the tiniest red glint in front of me, and I realized that it wasn’t moving, so it was in the road. Once I realized that the red glint was in the road, I had just enough time to avoid it and keep myself safe. What it was, was a trailer, a trailer made up of nothing but an axle and some plywood, no lights, no brakes, no nothing, just a broken reflector on the back. What’s more, this trailer was wider and taller than the car that was towing it, so the lights of the car were invisible from behind. Had the reflector not been there, I would likely have smashed right in to it, as there were no lights anywhere on the road for miles around, and no lights on the trailer as I said. Had that trailer been being operated during the day, the driver could have used the slowing or stopping hand signal to show that he was going slower than the speed limit on that road. As it was night though, he had nothing, and came very close to causing an accident, as his headlights were even so dim they were not visible at all from a good distance behind the car (A car with good working headlights on a pitch black road will be visible for a good distance from behind the car because of the wide area that the headlights light up).  So yes, people still do hook up trailers without lights, and trailers that block the car’s lights. Hand signals could make the difference between life and death for a situation like the one I just described.

Another situation I experienced while driving for GM should bring the importance of knowing what hands signals are home, and in this case I mean recognizing when they are being used, moreso than just being able to use them. I was driving a minivan, with a trailer on it, right before quitting time. I was headed back to the proving grounds, ready to head home. I was on a rural road, south of the proving grounds, and I was behind a ten year old car or so, filled with a mom and kids. All of a sudden the mom put her arm straight out from the driver’s side window, and began to slow down. It took me a second to figure out what she was doing, but then I realized the arm signal for a left turn, so I immediately took my foot off of the gas, and began to start slowing down for her. No sooner had I done that, then the dump truck behind me slammed in to me, and pushed me around her to the left (He went around her to the right. Thankfully no one in the car was hurt in any way). Had I not recognized her hand signal, I might have been going much faster when I was hit then I was, possibly making that accident much worse than it was. In the end, it was a totaled car, and a sore back for me, nothing more thank God. (In case you'd like more detail, the accident is described in more detail in my blog post: GM Stories: My Worst Accident...By Far).

So hand signals are important to know. Not only do you need them if you have an electrical problem with your car, or you are towing something that blocks the taillights of your car from behind, but it is very important that you be able to recognize when other people are using them, so that you can take the proper safe action in response to them. Are hand signals rare things anymore? Absolutely. Does this mean that they aren’t worthy of study? Absolutely not. Know what your hand signals are. Know why they are used, and be able to recognize them in use. This will be just another tool in your safe driving toolbox, one that will keep you safe and able to deal with differing driving situations when they happen. Until next time…

GM Stories: The Curse of Camo

I remember it like it was yesterday: I was maybe 13 or 14, tearing through the latest issue of Motor Trend, Car and Driver, or Road and Track, looking at all the cool cars that were coming out or that those magazines were testing. Inevitably, one thing caught my eye, and that was the cars that were in the future, the ones that the car companies hid with lots of camoflauge and fake rubber. the pages I was looking at back then were very similar to the one above from a recent issue of Motor Trend. They looked so cool. Anything could be under there. A gorgeous front end with a mean hood scoop. Sleek looking front lights, and an engine that could take you to the moon and back in two seconds. Anything could be there, but you had to wait until next year when the car companies released the new cars they had been testing. I always thought it would be amazing to drive one of those camo cars. Well, I was half right!

Fast forward to the late 1990s: Mesa, Arizona. My car for the day was to be a protoype Pontiac Aztek. If you find yourself saying, "what?" don't be surprised. They were not very noteworthy cars, except for maybe their looks, which weren't highly praised. Here's what one looked like:

 Except, of course, it didn't look anything like this. The entire car, with the exception of the windows and tires of course, was covered in a black, rubber-like material, with built in extensions at certain points to fool the automotive press into thinking that the shape was different than it was going to be. For instance on the Aztek above, I remember there being huge foam pads on the sides of the hood, to make the fenders seem larger, and another set of huge foam pads surrounding the rear window, to make the car look more box-like.

At this point, a camoflaged car doesn't sound so bad, right? You are driving a car, out in public, that is hidden from everyone, and only a few people know what it looks like. The trouble came inside the car itself. One thing I need to explain before I go further is that test cars are made for one of two reasons: to either test one component or a small group of components, or to test the whole car. More often than not, the camoflaged cars, called mules in the industry, were being tested for one component, so that is all the engineers were worried about. The Aztek I had that day had components in it cobbled from other cars, and this was pretty common back then. Your steering wheel might be from a Pontiac. Your instruments might be from a Chevrolet. Your radio might be from an Oldsmobile. Your seat might be from a  GMC truck. The engineers took whatever they had at hand often times to fulfill whatever need they had. Again, not so bad, but oftentimes, the radio wouldn't work, or the A/C would blow hot air, or a thousand other things that could go wrong with using a bunch of parts not meant to be used together. And this wasn't just in the Aztek. I remember driving a mule Saturn Vue, which looks like this without camo:

and it was honestly one of the worst cars I ever drove. Nothing worked on it, not the air conditioning, not the radio, not half of the components inside the car. In fact, it was so bad that it broke down on me during testing, but that's why they test them in the first place!

Let's get back to the Aztek, though. The best part of driving the Aztek was the washing, though. For some reason, even though the entire car was covered in camo, the engineers in charge wanted the body washed once every two days or a week. So the driver had to take the Aztek in to the car wash facility (we actually had two car washes at the GM Desert Proving Grounds in Mesa. One was an auto wash like you'd find at a gas station, and the other was a hand washing bay.) The Aztek had to be washed in the hand wash facility, and to ensure secrecy, the doors on both the entry and exit of the handwash facility had to be closed. Not so great during the summer, but I digress! Then all of the camoflauge had to be stripped away. This is the equivalent of taking down a big tent, and then putting it back up again, there were clips that clipped to the fender, velcro that held down other parts, and buckles that held still other parts. When all of that was done, and the car stood essentially naked, it was washed front to back, top to bottom. Keep in mind, the car was never seen in public like this, so no one but the engineers, mechanics, and the poor driver washing it, ever saw it without its camoflage on. Then the car was dried off, and, you guessed it, all the camoflage put back on. The entire process took about two hours to do, and the car could not leave the wash bay until all the camoflage was put back on. Needless to say, not most drivers favorite thing.

I ended up driving many camoflaged cars and trucks during my time at The GM Desert Proving Grounds. Some were betas like the Aztek described above. Others were closer to being done, and were much nicer in fit and finish. But I will never forget those cobbled together cars. Whether they were Cadillac prototypes, Saturn mules, or Pontiac proof vehicles, they all shared a lot of camoflage, broken interior components, and the feel that some of them were destined to break down at any moment.

But I do have to say that driving something that no one else was meant to see was pretty cool. The washing of the car, the having to cover the car during all breaks, even on the proving grounds, and the other procedures were a bit of a pain. But just like most things at the proving grounds were, the coolness factor overrode the mundance aspects of doing what we had to do on a daily basis. Until next time...

The Big Question

Anytime anyone designs a new freeway, or puts time in to thinking about traffic flow or some of the current problems plaguing driving like DUI’s and wrong way drivers, the underlying question is what is the best way to make it so that accidents can’t happen. Sadly, there is no one right answer to this question, but there are things you can do, and more importantly, times to do and not to do them, that will aid greatly in avoiding accidents, and that will be the focus of today’s article.

Actually, today’s article might be one of the shortest that I’ve ever written, because there is one thing that everyone can do, right now, that will significantly lower their risk of being in a crash, and will make it so that everyone reading this will have a higher chance of being able to make it home alive at the end of the day. What is it? Simple: don’t drive at night. According to the National Safety Council your risk of being in a fatal accident is three times greater at night than during the day. And another important consideration is the recent rash of wrong way drivers. I have been following this story for years, ever since I had a wrong way driver, an older gentleman, pass me going down the offramp of a freeway as I was getting off the freeway on the offramp. (In other words, he turned down the offramp, confusing it for an onramp). I did not read of any stories later that night or the next day about wrong way drivers, so my guess is that he figured out his error, or a police officer stopped him before he was able to do any harm.  Wrong way drivers create huge headaches in the Phoenix area. And would you like to know the one thing that ties them all together, besides the usual impairment or fatigue? They all happen at night. I have never heard or seen of a wrong way driver who drove the wrong way when the sun was out. It just doesn’t happen. And that makes sense when you think about it, because you can see the road and the road markings much easier in the day than at night. So anyone driving the wrong way during the day would see that much sooner, and be able to correct it sooner as well.

So the moral of all of this is that if you can avoid driving at night as much as possible, your survival rate is going to skyrocket. True, there are more accidents total during the day than at night, but this is because there are more cars on the road during the day. At night, your chances of running in to a drunk driver are much higher, and even if you don’t run in to a drunk driver, you could run in to a tired driver, which is often times just as dangerous.

Now of course, no one lives in a bubble. There are times where a child will need medicine or food, or a friend has broken down and you need to go help, or a boyfriend or girlfriend need you to come over to comfort them. You now have to drive in the dark, but how to do it safely?

First off, cut the speed. You should not be exceeding the speed limit, no matter how much it looks like no one is around for miles. Most of the drunk driving accidents and wrong way driving accidents took the other people involved in them completely by surprise, simply because the darkness made it so much harder to see things clearly. Slowing down gives you more time to react to situations.

Also, stick to surface streets if you can. All of the wrong way driver accidents I’ve ever heard of took place on freeways, and most surface streets late at night are empty enough to allow you to see situations in a shorter amount of time than you would if you were on a freeway. True, people can come out of intersections without stopping, or turn in front of you without signaling, but those are smaller risks to take than a potential head on collision with a wrong way driver, so In my opinion, the surface streets are safer.

Lastly, if you must drive at night, don’t take more time than you need to. Get where you need to go, do what you need to do, and get back home. Don’t take the scenic route and don’t do other errands that can wait until later, when it’s daytime. Get home as quickly as possible. The less time you are on the roads at night, the less chance of an accident.

There is no magic formula or spell that will make all accidents disappear. However, if a person looks at when most bad accidents happen, and avoids that time, their survival rate will go up. Fatal accidents are three times more likely at night, and nighttime is the only time wrong way drivers appear on freeways. By staying off of the roads at night, you take yourself out of a risky, and potentially fatal, situation. Until next time…

To Hit....Or Not To Hit.

(Please Note: This article is for entertainment purposes only)

I live in a rural area, in the mountains of Arizona, and one thing that is a constant here, along with cold winters, are animals. Animal crossing signs are as ubiquitous here as street lights would be in any big city. The problem can be as small as a couple of animals walking along the side of the road inside the town limits, or much larger. A good example of larger was when some friends and I were coming back from Flagstaff, on a well-travelled back road in April of 2016. We had only been outside of Flagstaff for about a half hour at around 5 or 6 in the evening, when animals started to be seen on both sides of the road. And by animals I don’t mean squirrels or rabbits. I mean 500 to 800 pound elk, like the example in the top picture. I instantly slowed down, but the constant sight, mile after mile of animal silhouettes and pairs of eyes glowing on either side of the road is still the most terrifying thing I’ve ever been through while driving. Before it was done, we had driven through an elk herd that was thirty to fifty miles long. Had one of them decided to spook and bolt in to the road, they would have easily flattened the SUV we were in. How you decide whether to hit the animal, or avoid it, is the subject of today’s article.

As you might know if you are a veteran reader of this blog, I used to be a test driver for GM at their proving grounds in Mesa, Arizona. During driver training, we were told one thing when it came to animals: if one got in your way...hit it. Don’t avoid it, don’t swerve, don’t try and protect it. Send it to the next life. Why would the instructor tell us that? It’s because you are likely to do less damage to yourself by hitting the animal, then you are by swerving to avoid it. If you hit the animal, you kill the animal, and maybe destroy the front of your car, but if everyone in the car is seatbelted properly, and the air bags work, the injuries to the people inside will be minor. If you swerve to avoid the animal, you risk losing control of the car, which means that maybe you roll the car, or maybe you end up out of control, hitting the side or the rear of the car, potentially causing much more damage to the people inside. He was right for the most part, as we will begin discussing now.

The first step that any driver needs to take when in country that animals live or cross close by, is to not ignore the animal crossing signs, and keep your speed at the limit, or even below if it’s dark. This will give you the greatest chance to avoid contact with the animal, because if you are going slowly, or relatively slowly, you’ll have more time, and less speed to scrub off if you can take evasive action because of the animal. So the first step is to slow down inside animal crossing zones. And yes, some of these zones, like the ones by my house, can be up to twenty miles long.  That will mean going  a long time at the speed limit or lower. But I think you’ll agree that a longer trip is worth it if it means getting to where you are going alive.

The next step is to turn your focus all the way up when in these zones. Don’t get complacent, don’t turn your favorite music up, slouch in the driver’s seat, and pretend that you are on the freeway. You need to be intensely focused not only on the road, but on the roadsides as well, especially if you are driving through valleys or places where an animal could easily get on to the road from the area next to it. You must treat these areas like people are told to treat guns. Just as a gun is to be treated as if it is always loaded, an animal crossing zone needs to be treated as if it isn’t a matter of if an animal crosses, but when the animal crosses, and you as a driver need to have that kind of awareness to survive.

Now to the crux of the matter. Should you follow the GM driving instructor’s advice, and always hit the animal, or are there times where trying to avoid it would be OK? This is all going to depend on the road conditions, and your speed. If you are going pretty fast, and an elk or a deer dart out in front of you, you have to be able to figure out what would be more dangerous: you hitting the animal, or you losing control because you swerved out of the way to avoid the animal. In this case, it’s not even close. If you are going fast, and the animal comes out quickly…hit it. It is the safest thing for you, because it is the only solution that limits the danger to you. If you swerve at high speeds, especially if it’s dark, your chances of skidding and losing control are huge. This could mean much more dangerous situations than hitting an animal.

Other things that need to be taken in to account are how wide the road is, whether it’s dry or not, whether or not there’s traffic coming towards you and behind you, and if the animal is moving.  If you are in a situation where you are on a tight two lane road with traffic, and an animal comes out, you can try to steer around him but only slightly. If he is taking up most of the road, hit him. Hitting the animal is much safer for you. Of course, this assumes that you are going at a speed that is too high to be able to stop in time after you see the animal. Of course, not hitting the animal is always best, and I do advise that whenever possible. But if the road is too narrow, and you don’t have enough time, hitting the animal is the best bet.

Now in the last paragraph, I did mention steering slightly to try and miss the animal. Some animals, like deer, will freeze when hit with a bright light. If a deer does that and freezes in the middle of the road, and the deer is far enough away and you are going at a slow enough speed that you see that you can safely steer around the deer to the right, with road conditions that allow that to be done safely, do it. Then if it’s safe, get out and try and shoo the deer off of the road so that it’s not a menace to anyone else. (A quick tip I read is that flashing your high beams at the deer a few times sometimes works to wake the deer up and get it to move again.) Notice though, in this scenario, the deer was far enough in the road where a driver could steer around it, the driver noticed it far enough ahead to take avoiding action, and the driver was going at a slow enough speed to take that action. That is why steering around it can be possibly advised in this case. But again, if the animal comes out of nowhere, and you are at a high rate of speed, you have no choice but to hit it.

I am an English teacher, and on an interesting note, this subject has been tackled by poetry. The poem is travelling through the Dark, by William Stafford (found on the Poetry Foundation’s site):

Traveling through the Dark

BY WILLIAM E. STAFFORD

Traveling through the dark I found a deer

dead on the edge of the Wilson River road.

It is usually best to roll them into the canyon:

that road is narrow; to swerve might make more dead.

By glow of the tail-light I stumbled back of the car

and stood by the heap, a doe, a recent killing;

she had stiffened already, almost cold.

I dragged her off; she was large in the belly.

My fingers touching her side brought me the reason—

her side was warm; her fawn lay there waiting,

alive, still, never to be born.

Beside that mountain road I hesitated.

The car aimed ahead its lowered parking lights;

under the hood purred the steady engine.

I stood in the glare of the warm exhaust turning red;

around our group I could hear the wilderness listen.

I thought hard for us all—my only swerving—,

then pushed her over the edge into the river.

Now apart from being an English teacher, and someone who loves poetry, why did I include this poem here? Simply because this person has the right mindset, and acts properly in the face of this situation. First off, the person recognizes the danger of swerving around something on the road, and how that could lead to a loss of control, and a worse accident. Next the person sees the danger of the dead animal, and that someone could swerve to avoid it, and get in to an accident because of the dead deer. Lastly, the person takes action when and where they can, and they roll the deer in to the river, taking care of the danger.

We coexist with animals on this planet, and even though we have become nice and comfy in our wooden and concrete cocoons, the animals are out there, and it helps to realize that we are on their turf when we are driving though an animal crossing, not the other way around.

Remember, the golden rule when it comes to dealing with animal strikes is that it’s better to hit the animal than to try and swerve around it and lose control of the car. But if the animal is far enough ahead, and you are going slowly enough, with enough room, you could potentially avoid the animal. But you must take in to account traffic and the road conditions before you make the decision. What’s most important is to always stay focused while driving in animal crossing country, and not take the signs or the warnings lightly. Do this, and your chances of an animal strike go down significantly. Until next time…