Cars are not toys

It took me a little while but I finally figured out that the majority of people under the age of 25 who own automobiles are idiots! No, no, no…not you and not her, but that other her, she’s a blithering, drooling, semi-trainable asshole! They just nailed another one in New Hampshire who hit a child. She was “under the influence,” whatever that happens to mean in this case. Anyway, they list her age as 25. If you had asked me from looking at her picture, I would have said, “45, ridden hard, and put away wet.” Man, did she look used, abused, and totally confused.

We seem to have a lot of car killers going around in New England lately. One woman, also in New Hampshire, had been stopped for speeding eight hours before she plowed into a group of riders doing their thing for charity. She killed two and injured three others. Here’s the kicker: On that first stop, she was found to be driving without a license…in a car borrowed from a friend…who loaned her the car again, and this time she killed the two cyclists. The police say that not having a license is not an arrestable offense. Shouldn’t it at least be impound the car and call for someone with a license to come and pick you up? To this day, I don’t know if it was a case of not having a license; whether or not she had one and it had been suspended; why did her friend loan her the car the second time; and finally, don’t the politicians in New Hampshire think it’s about time to take another look at the laws governing drivers in the state?

Cars are not toys. Yes, it’s true; most of them are made of crap these days. My late wife had a 1936 Buick that she swore was capable of plowing through saplings four inches in diameter and brought certain destruction to roadside mailboxes. This, of course, was in her wilder, single college days and the car had originally belonged to her mother. I’m quite certain that when it was given to her by her mother, there wasn’t a dent or scratch. Anna, her mother, was approximately four feet, eight inches tall, and never allowed the speedometer to pass 25.

Today’s cars are made of aluminum foil and plastic. They don’t hold up to well against saplings and fair even worse when it comes to mailboxes. Several years ago, I was run off the road and had to have some body work done on my ’99 Toyota. The fellow at the body shop is the one who told me about the aluminum foil. After he’d removed the rear quarter panel, he demonstrated what he meant by tearing a part of the panel by hand. He then invited me to try; if was frightening to feel the ease with which I could rend this piece of ‘tinfoil.’

What I really don’t understand is what makes people believe that they are safe behind the wheel. Safe to have their music blasting as loud as possible; safe to be talking on the telephone while driving through parking lots with no regard for other cars that might be leaving their parking spots; safe to totally disregard people walking in crosswalks…people can also make a hell of a dent in your car and smash your windows if you hit them hard enough! It’s almost as though they regard their car as a tank. They are not tanks. SUV’s are not tanks. They are not heavily armored. Most important of all, cars are not toys. They require sensible driving, not senseless aiming. They require people to handle them with the same amount of care with which you would handle a loaded weapon.

Recently, I was talking with a young neighbor who is also on the race car circuit.  “It’s not me I’m worried about when I’m on the track,” he told me, “but you have to keep your eye on your four mirrors for the idiots who are behind and beside you because you never know how they may try to get you off the track. That’s how I’m beginning to feel about neighborhood driving or driving on major highways. I was returning from a doctor’s appointment earlier this week and was on a highway where the posted speed limit is 55 miles per hour. I decided to conduct an experiment to see if I could set the cruise control at 65 and remain in the right lane all the way home. I did not pass one car and drew several dirty looks as drivers passed me. This is a four-lane highway…on either side. I tried to guess how fast those in the left lane were moving. My guesstimate was somewhere between 80 to 85…and no one slowed down through construction zones where the speed was supposed to drop to 45. I love the sign, “Speeding fines are doubled in construction zones.” The zone was crowded with State Police cars, blue lights flashing, and no one seemed to give a damn.  Two radar guns and some speed traps up the hill and Massachusetts wouldn’t have had to worry about a budget shortfall ever again!

At least twice a week, our local ABC, NBC, and CBS affiliates show cars wrapped around trees, cut in half by a collision with another car, bark shorn from trees by cars whose drivers thought they had everything under control.  Yet, no one seems to learn. Either they don’t watch the news or they believe themselves to be invincible and immortal, and it just ain’t so.

Here me on this one: The minute you climb behind the wheel, you are in a war zone. At 45 mph, you’re driving a car; at 65 mph, you’re steering a car; at anything over 75, you’re aiming a car. And when you’re aiming, control is no longer in your hands. In addition, if you drink or do drugs or text and drive, you might as well have a gun in your hand and be playing Russian roulette, because it’s not a matter of ‘if’ your accident is going to happen; it’s merely a question of ‘when’ it’s going to happen.

Cars are not toys. More and more, they appear to be weapons of destruction, driven by those who know, without question, that rules don’t apply to them…but they always apply to the other guy…who believes exactly the same thing!