Driving While Liberated

It made national news -- a woman who admitted she was painting her fingernails while driving at a high speed, slammed into a motorcyclist, throwing the biker hundreds of feet, killing her.

Last winter (Feb. 2008) I was in the same general area, waiting to turn onto a main road. Speed limit on the main road was 45. Family in a white SUV was waiting to turn left onto the smaller road I was on. I was waiting to turn left onto the main road.

Some traffic. Typical situation. I was first in line to turn, couple of cars behind me. I had the radio on and I remember looking at the knobs or switches because as I looked down for a second, I heard an atomic bomb go off.

A kid in an old car slammed into the back of the family's stopped SUV at 60 mph. In an instant, what was an SUV turned into an accordion. Before anyone could utter, "Oh my God!" the kid, badly broken up, got out of his car and tried to walk to the van. And he was busted up bad, I can tell you.

Text messaging, ringtones, the radio, whatever he was doing, his choice changed lives forever. I turned right instead of left, pulled over and called for help. Paramedics and police arrived quickly. Other motorists got out of their cars to help with traffic. I waited for the police and then left. I called them later to see how the victims were and to give my name as a witness. At that time, they said there were no fatalities. Yet.

The year before, my neighbor was on her way home from church at night (Good Friday) and got rolled over and dragged 100 feet by a lady in an SUV, on a cell phone. Fire department had to use a hoist to get the SUV off of her -- she was pinned underneath. Both of her arms were broken near the shoulders. Miracle, she survived, had months of therapy, and is now back at work.

I remember standing on the El platform in 1983, waiting to catch a train downtown to go to work. The tracks ran along the expressway. I was appalled to see a guy driving his car on the Kennedy, with a newspaper folded over the steering wheel.

Bicyclists too, are getting killed in droves in Chicago.

Any suggestions? Is this another freedom of speech issue? Do people have a right to drive a vehicle and do virtually anything they want on the basis of being liberated and "empowered"? There couldn't be enough laws passed and enforced to cover any of this -- they'd have to have devices to measure where the eyes are focusing, if the head turns too often towards the dashboard, if hands come off the steering wheel. Sensors all over the car. Voice sensors, too. Oh, that'd fly.

People have to choose whether "defensive driving" is an antiquated, extremist term, thus taking on the meaning "offensive driving" in this brave, new upside down world we call home. Or is there some small portion still alive in the human psyche that says there are limits as to how much one's own selfishness is serving them and society.