Opinion: Distracted driving is nothing to joke about

Talk about it

A number of years ago, a work crew installed a pipeline through our neighborhood.

We live on a corner, with grass boulevards between our sidewalk and the street on each side. The trenching crew chose our side of each street to tear up. If I’d been doing the project, I might have only done one side of my property, say the north-south line, and used the opposite side of the east-west street for the other line. That’s dividing the misery. On the other hand, doubling up on me probably cut down the number of property owners who complained.

I didn’t complain about the project, really. I was a little put out by the way the trencher went through my underground sprinkling. Before they started, the crew told me to get a bunch of those little flags on wires and mark the location of each sprinkler head in the boulevard. That made sense, and I did it.

The trencher cut every line to every sprinkler head. They came back and spliced the lines together eventually. Still, I didn’t understand why I was asked to mark the heads. A friend explained it this way: “They couldn’t have hit them all if you hadn’t marked them. The odds of missing one would have been pretty good.”

Good line, huh? I laughed heartily and forgot about it.

I remembered that line recently as I looked through some news clips and other information on various highway crashes from the past winter. I was reminded of the number of times either a snowplow or a Highway Patrol vehicle was struck by another motorist. I don’t have the official tally, but since winter started, about a dozen Patrol vehicles and maybe three dozen snowplows have been struck. That’s way more than in any of the recent past winters.

A couple of us were talking about that at the office, and someone wondered why drivers didn’t see the flashing lights of the plows or the Patrol vehicles. My friend’s observation from the pipeline project popped into my head, and I thought, “Well, sure. They couldn’t possibly hit that many plows and squad cars if the flashing lights weren’t making it clear where they were.” That would be funnier if people hadn’t been hurt in those crashes.

My suspicion is most of the drivers who crashed into the squad cars and snowplows were distracted by some activity they considered a higher priority than driving their vehicle down the highway. Some drivers pretty much admit that. One or two said they saw the plow ahead but didn’t realize it was in the same lane as they were traveling until it was too late to avoid the crash.

I have a hard time believing the person who said that was doing nothing but watching the road ahead of him as his vehicle came closer and closer to the plow ahead. It’s far more likely something distracting was going on — phone call, working the radio dial, reading the morning paper, and reaching for something from the back seat, groping for the lit cigarette that dropped on the floor mat or the seat cushion or maybe just nodding off — something besides driving down the highway alert for hazards.

Years ago, I sometimes scanned the newspaper headlines as I drove. I thought I could look down at the paper and up at the road and give full attention to each task. I can’t believe I was ever that careless with my life and the lives of other people.

A photographer friend used to change film in a black bag as he drove his Ford Torino back from assignment. That way he could process film and make prints as soon as he reached the office. The changing bag took both hands. He steered with his knees. He told me several years later that was crazy.

These days, if I were tempted to read or make phone calls or grope on the floorboard, I’d just have to remember how many of my fellow motorists are doing the same thing. That’s scary.

Tags: terry woster, opinion, updates, columns